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POETS  OF  AMERICA. 


POETS 


OF   AMERICA 


BY 


EDMUND   CLARENCE  STEDMAN 


AUTHOR  OF  "VICTORIAN   POETS 


BOSTON  AN©- NEW  Yt5RK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND   COMPANY 

Cfit  llilicrpiDf  l^rtetf,  CambriDge 
1886 


Copyright,  1885, 
By  EDMUND  CLARENCE  STEDMAN. 

All  rights  reserved. 


FOURTH    EDITION. 


The  Riverside  Press,  Cambridge ! 
Electrotyped  and  Printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  &  Co. 


7530? 
IWhl 


TO 
THE  YOUNGER  WRITERS   OF  AMERICA 

THIS  WORK, 

CHIEFLY  A  REVIEW  OF  OUR  FIRST  DISTINCTIVE 
LYRICAL   PERIOD, 


Is  cortualljj  Engcrito. 


INTRODUCTION 


*T"*EN  years  have  passed  since  the  completion  of  my 
*  critical  survey  of  the  poets  and  poetry  of  England 
from  the  beginning  of  the  present  reign.  The  scheme  of 
the  Victorian  Poets  included,  besides  an  extended  review 
of  acknowledged  leaders,  a  concise  analysis  of  groups 
forming  the  general  choir  of  the  period  represented. 
The  work  thus  became  somewhat  complete  in  scope,  and 
doubtless  has  served  as  a  critical  handbook  and  means 
of  reference.  This  incidental  result,  however,  was  quite 
subordinate  to  the  author's  main  design;  and  I  think 
that  such  a  fact  was  evident  not  only  to  a  professional 
class,  but  to  all  readers  interested  concerning  the  spirit 
and  methods  of  poetry,  —  especially  of  our  English  song. 
To  that  design  I  wish  shortly  to  refer,  as  it  is  the 
chief  motive  of  the  present  volume  also.  But  first  I 
would  reproduce  a  statement  made  in  the  Preface  to  the 
former  work,  viz.,  —  that  the  author  originally  had  under- 
taken to  write  upon  the  poets  of  this  country  and  the 
causes  of  their  successes  and  failures ;  that  on  examina- 
tion he  had  found  modern  and  radical  changes  in  the 
conditions    affecting   ideal    effort,    at    home    and    abroad ; 


INTRODUCTION. 


arts,  at  an  accelerative  speed  that  soon  must  make  it  a 
typical  exemplar  of  ideal  as  well  as  material  production. 
Nor  can  there  be  a  time  when  the  bent  of  its  ideality 
will  be  more  suggestive  than  now,  for  the  present  angle 
determines  the  arc  of  the  future.  3.  The  first  true 
course  of  American  poetry  has  distinguished  the  prin- 
cipal term  covered  in  these  essays ;  a  first  heat  has 
been  run  during  that  time,  to  whose  leaders  special 
chapters  are  devoted.  It  is  rare  that  an  epoch  so  def- 
initely begun  and  ended  can  be  selected  as  the  object 
of  synthetic  examination.  The  reader  is  invited  to  study 
a  period  as  distinct  in  literature  as  our  Constitutional 
period  in  politics,  or  the  Thirty  Years'  War  in  history ; 
one,  moreover,  in  which  poetry  bore  closer  relations  to 
the  life  and  enthusiasm  of  a  people  than  it  often  has 
borne  in  other  lands  and  times. 

We  see,  also,  that  this  term  has  been  singularly  con- 
current with  that  of  the  Victorian  hemicycle,  so  that  an 
examination  of  the  poetry  of  our  English  tongue  for  the 
last  fifty  years  is  compassed  in  my  two  books.  In  order 
to  perceive  the  evolution  of  a  new  minstrelsy  from  its 
foreign  and  native  germs,  the  opening  chapters  of  this 
volume  are  occupied  partly  with  the  efforts  of  the  Colo- 
nial verse  -  writers  and  their  immediate  successors.  A 
final  chapter  contains  a  rapid  summary  of  what  is  now 
doing,  as  a  basis  for  speculation  on  the  outlook  and  the 
chances  of  a  revival  in  the  future.  The  reader  thus  ob- 
tains a  general  view  of  American  poets  and  poetry  from 
their  outset  to  the  present  date. 


INTRODUCTION.  xi 


Nevertheless,  the  main  purpose  of  this  work,  as  sug- 
gested heretofore,  is  to  continue  my  former  effort,  by 
obtaining  further  illustrations  of  the  poetic  life,  and  ideas 
with  respect  to  the  spirit  and  methods  of  the  art  of 
poetry.  The  marginal  Analysis  and  topical  Index  are 
planned  to  accord  with  this  intention.  My  views  were 
formulated  to  some  extent  in  our  consideration  of  the 
transatlantic  field.  They  can  be  emphasized  in  no  way 
more  readily  than  by  fresh  and  personal  examples  which 
are  a  kind  of  object-lessons  ;  by  criticism  of  a  new 
series  of  poets,  employing  the  same  tongue,  but  varying 
in  genius  and  temperament,  and  influenced  by  the  con- 
ditions of  a  distinct  environment. 

The  tenor  of  the  original  discussion,  which  I  have  no 
reason  to  modify  seriously,  was  in  favor  of  simplicity, 
impulse,  sincerity,  as  opposed  to  obscurity,  didacticism, 
and  the  affectation  either  of  refinement  or  a  "  saucy 
roughness," — always  in  behalf  of  imagination,  and  against 
the  multiform  devices  proffered,  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously, in  lieu  of  that  supreme  quality.  It  placed  con- 
struction before  decoration,  the  tone  of  a  composition 
above  its  detail,  and  looked  to  the  spirit  rather  than  the 
structure,  —  not  content,  however,  with  the  half-truth  of 
a  writer  who  declares  that  poetry  is  a  spirit,  not  a 
form,  —  the  truth  being  that  poetry  is  a  spirit,  taking 
form.  Finally,  I  welcomed  every  sign  of  healthy  passion 
and  every  promising  dramatic  tendency,  both  invigorat- 
ing after  a  prolonged  reflective  period.  Various  sins  of 
commission  were  discoverable  among  the  lesser  pupils  of 


xii  INTRODUCTION. 


Wordsworth,  the  "  spasmodic "  lyrists,  the  Neo-Romantic 
artificers,  etc.,  and  frequently  an  absence  was  noted  of 
merits  that  undoubtedly  are  found  in  our  native  verse  — 
simplicity  and  honest  impulse.  The  last-named  traits  do 
not  of  themselves  suffice,  for  spontaneity  must  be  allied 
with  power.  American  singers  often  have  been  more 
natural  than  imaginative,  and  have  risen  to  passion  only 
in  rare  individual  or  public  crises.  Our  most  noted 
group,  that  of  New  England,  distinguished  for  grace 
and  scholarship,  fervent  in  conviction  and  of  marked  in- 
tellectuality, has  been  pronounced  too  thin  -  blooded  ; 
what  sensuousness  enriches  American  poetry  has  ap- 
peared chiefly  in  the  work  of  its  middle  and  younger 
schools.  On  the  other  hand,  our  verse  has  been  meas- 
urably free  from  the  vice  of  over-decoration,  prevalent 
in  the  writings  of  the  minor  British  romanticists  ten 
years  or  more  ago.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  trace 
of  this  now  observed  is  something  from  which  the  new 
school  soon  will  free  itself.  And  I  here  say  to  our 
young  writers,  as  I  have  said  again  and  again  with  re- 
spect to  their  foreign  standards,  that  in  literature,  as  in 
architecture,  construction  must  be  decorated,  not  decora- 
tion constructed,  —  that  invention  must  precede  them 
both,  —  and  that,  if  imagination  be  clouded  and  the  glow 
of  passion  unfelt,  it  is  utter  and  worthless  jugglery  to 
compose  at  all.  An  enumeration,  in  a  closing  chapter, 
of  younger  poets  and  their  efforts  is  purposely  uncritical, 
except  in  the  case  of  Lanier ;  it  aims  to  show  these  at 
their  best,  but   the   fact   is  not   gainsaid   that  there   is  a 


INTRODUCTION.  xill 


lull  in  the  force  and  efficacy  of  American  song.  My 
conclusion  is  that  we  are  not  experiencing  a  decadence, 
but  rather  a  diversion  of  imaginative  energy  to  new 
forms  of  employment,  and  this  not  without  a  fair  com- 
pensation. It  may  be  well  that  our  verse  thus  should 
escape  the  phase  of  minute  realism  and  analysis  through 
which  modern  literature  is  passing,  and  which  probably 
will  give  way  before  a  dramatic  and  inventive  impulse 
by  the  time  a  second  epoch  of  poetic  achievement  shall 
be  inaugurated. 

My  review  of  the  exquisite  productions  of  Tennyson 
and  his  compeers  led  to  consideration  of  the  methods  of 
poetry  as  an  art.  Apt  illustrations  were  at  hand,  and 
my  remarks  often  and  designedly  were  addressed  to  fel- 
lows of  the  craft.  The  present  work  is  less  technical; 
I  have  more  to  say  of  the  poetic  temperament  and  the 
conditions  that  affect  it ;  more  of  poetry  as  the  music 
of  emotion,  faith,  aspiration,  and  all  the  chords  of  life. 
The  atmosphere  in  which  our  poets  have  flourished  is 
observed,  as  well  as  their  special  aids  and  hindrances 
and  whatever  has  been  significant  in  their  various  ca- 
reers. The  personality  of  the  noted  American  minstrels 
has  been  more  suggestive  than  that  of  their  English 
contemporaries.  In  this  respect  they  bear  a  likeness  to 
the  poets  of  the  Georgian  era.  With  few  exceptions  the 
Victorian  brotherhood,  living  under  advanced  social  and 
literary  systems,  have  been  neither  greatly  involved  with 
the  action  and  history  of  their  time  nor  picturesquely 
conspicuous  as  individuals.     Nevertheless,  it    is    not   the 


xiv  INTRODUCTION. 


main  thing,  in  writing  of  a  poet,  to  consider  the  expe- 
riences which  he  shares  in  common  with  other  men. 
He  must  be  judged  by  things  peculiar  to  himself  —  the 
creative  gift  and  work  that  bring  him  within  the  franchise 
of  literary  criticism.  The  estimate,  then,  to  a  certain 
extent  must  be  technical  ;  and  so  far  as  my  own  com- 
ment has  been  addressed  to  the  literary  class,  its  en- 
deavor is,  as  a  Californian  author  pleases  me  by  saying, 
to  get  down  to  the  bed-rock  of  poetry  as  an  art  and  to 
its  pure  gold  as  an  inspiration.  If  passages  occur  where 
the  agreement  of  polite  thinkers,  as  to  established  proc- 
esses and  conclusions,  is  not  assumed  as  a  matter  of 
course,  it  is  because  I  hope  this  volume  will  be  read  by 
some  who  hitherto  have  paid  slight  attention  to  its  topics. 
There  is  no  good  reason  why  a  critical  treatise,  like  any 
other  work,  should  not  appeal  to  both  select  and  general 
readers,  though  possibly  on  very  diverse  grounds  of  in- 
terest. 

During  the  preparation  of  this  work,  the  last  of  its 
kind  that  I  shall  publish,  I  have  had  my  share  of  the 
ills  from  which  none  are  quite  exempt.  It  has  been  de- 
layed by  the  rarity  of  intervals  at  which  I  could  devote 
a  wholesome  energy  to  its  completion,  and  feel  assured 
that  it  would  betray  no  tinge  of  personal  discourage- 
ment. If  injustice  has  been  done,  in  the  delicate  task  of 
making  even  the  slightest  reference  to  one's  literary  as- 
sociates, it  has  not  been  of  malice  aforethought. 

Acknowledgment  is  due  to  friends,  —  especially  to 
Messrs.  Gilder,  Johnson,  Buel,  and  Carey,  of  "The  Cen- 


INTRODUCTION.  XV 


tury"  office,  —  and  to  Mr.  G.  T.  Elliot,  the  scholarly  cor- 
rector at  the  Riverside  Press,  and  his  assistants,  for  pro- 
fessional courtesies  in  aid  of  my  labor  now  ended  ;  also 
to  my  son,  Arthur  Stedman,  for  expert  revision  of  copy 
and  verification  of  names  and  dates.  Where  authorities 
differ,  or  are  silent,  with  respect  to  matters  of  fact,  I 
have  consulted  —  as  far  as  practicable  —  the  persons  di- 
rectly interested,  except  in  the  cases  of  living  female 
writers   whose  dates   of  birth  are  not  given  already  in 

standard  compilations. 

E.  C.  S. 

New  York,  September, 


w    rut  * 

UNIVERSITY 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER    I.  pAGE 

Early  and  Recent  Conditions i 

CHAPTER    II. 
Growth  of  the  American  School        .       .        .       .  31 

CHAPTER    III. 
William  Cullen  Bryant  .       . 62 

CHAPTER    IV. 
John  Greenleaf  Whittier 95 

CHAPTER  V. 
Ralph  Waldo  Emerson 133 

CHAPTER  VI. 
Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow 180 

CHAPTER    VII. 
Edgar  Allan  Poe -.       .       .        .225 

CHAPTER    VIII. 
Oliver  Wendell  Holmes 273 


XV111  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER    IX. 
James  Russell  Lowell 304 

CHAPTER    X. 
Walt  Whitman 349 

CHAPTER    XI. 
Bayard  Taylor 396 

CHAPTER    XII. 
The  Outlook 435 


INDEX 477 


POETS  OF  AMERICA. 


POETS  OF  AMERICA 


CHAPTER    I. 


EARLY  AND   RECENT   CONDITIONS. 


I. 

IT  is  my  design  to  trace  the  current  of  poesy,  deep- 
ening and  widening  in  common  with  our  streams 
of  riches,  knowledge,  and  power ;  to  show  an  influence 
upon  the  national  sentiment  no  less  potent,  if  less  ob- 
vious, than  that  derived  from  the  historic  records  of 
our  past ;  to  watch  the  first  dawning  upon  an  eager 
people  of  "  the  happy,  heavenly  vision  men  call  Art "  ; 
to  observe  closely  and  to  set  down  with  an  honest 
hand  our  foremost  illustrations  of  the  Rise  of  Poetry  in 
America.  Such  is  my  purpose,  and  I  deem  it  not  a 
mean  one.  We  think  of  power  and  wealth  as  things  in 
themselves,  but  they  are  strong  and  rich  only  in  their 
relations  to  the  life  of  man.  The  essential  part  of  that 
life  is  in  his  spirit,  of  which  imagination  is  the  king,  — 
and  the  sister  arts,  with  poetry  at  their  front,  are  to  be 
accounted  its  highest  forms  of  expression. 

The  song  of  a  nation  is  accepted  as  an  ultimate  test 
of  the  popular  spirit ;  as  the  earliest  form  of  speech 
and  the  ripest,  —  whether  the  utterance  of  feelings 
common  to  all,  or  of  the  fine  and  daring  speculations 
of  the  noblest  minds.  Examine  it,  and  form  opinions 
of  the  country's  general  literature,  of  the  hold  upon 
art  and  action  and  scientific  achievement.     If  we  have 


The  au- 
thor's pur- 


National 
song. 


EARLY  AND  RECENT  CONDITIONS. 


CP.  "  Vic- 
torian Po- 
ets": p.  i. 


Suggestion 
to  the 
reader. 


seen  a  true  poetic  movement  in  America,  we  may  be 
sure  that  we  have  had  marches  in  other  fields  of  prog- 
ress. The  inquiry  concerning  the  genuineness  and 
value  of  such  a  movement  affords  a  title  to  this  work, 
and  a  review  of  the  conditions  that  have  helped  or  hin- 
dered it  must  be  included.  Upon  the  method  chosen 
for  a  study  of  the  recent  period  in  England,  my  present 
researches  are  devoted  chiefly  to  the  careers  and  pro- 
ductions of  leading  poets  whose  reputations  are  long- 
established,  and  who,  upon  the  whole,  fairly  represent 
the  various  tendencies  of  American  song.  And  thus, 
incidentally  and  with  fresh  opportunities,  we  may  ex- 
tend our  knowledge  of  "  the  aim  and  province  of  the 
art  of  Poetry,"  and  obtain  under  a  new  atmosphere  fur- 
ther illustrations  of  the  poetic  temperament  and  life. 

The  subject  cannot  be  lightly  entered  upon,  and  as 
if  for  entertainment  merely.  Properly  considered, 
there  is  no  more  suggestive  undertaking  than  to  re- 
view the  first  displays  of  lyrical  genius  in  a  land  as 
notable  as  any  upon  earth.  These  may  seem  crude 
and  familiar  to  ourselves,  and  possibly  are  not  fully 
estimated  by  older  nations  whose  very  age  and  glory 
make  them  self-contained.  But,  if  the  future  is  to 
have  a  greatness  of  its  own,  a  study  of  New  World 
poetry  is  of  equal  importance  with  that  devoted  to 
the  earlier  or  contemporary  verse  of  the  mother-land. 
The  rea3er,  then,  will  do  well  to  bear  with  the  de- 
tails of  a  prefatory  analysis,  though  they  lack  that  in- 
terest which  adheres  to  the  lives  and  works  of  the 
various  poets  to  whom  his  attention  will  be  invited. 
The  points  which  I  shall  make  will  not  be  wholly 
novel,  but  by  grouping  them  newly,  and  in  a  logical 
manner,  we  may  get  some  notion  of  the  real  quality 
of  the  first  genuine  awakening  of  our  home-song. 

For  that  there  has  been  such  an  awakening  is  the 


LAWS  OF  GROWTH. 


very  cause   and   foundation  of  these  essays,  and  if  I 
did   not  perceive  this   fact  I  should  have  no  excuse 
for  their  general  endeavor.     It  is  true  that  a  nation's 
literature  will  not  appear  out  of  season.      Poetry,  its 
most   spontaneous   form,  is   a  growth  rather  than  an 
artifice,  or   it   does   not  come   to   strengthen   and   to 
stay.     Let   me   acknowledge,  as   heretofore,  the  bear- 
ing of  the  conditions  under  which  it  is  produced,  and 
that  a  poet  must  be  viewed  in  the  light  and  shadow 
of  his  environment;  furthermore,  that  when  a  time  is 
ripe  there  are  found  both  idealists  and  men  of  action 
to  represent  it,  —  springing  up  as  when,  in  the  phys- 
ical world,  the  pines   and  fir-trees   of   a  virgin  forest 
have   been   cleared  away,  and  a  novel  flora  suddenly 
appears,  whose  germs  have  been  hidden  in  the  under- 
mould,  awaiting  their  own  season   of  room  and  light 
and   air.     But  let  me   also,  and   at  present   no   less 
than  in  our  foreign  excursions,  include  a  factor  which 
the  new  criticism   often   overlooks.     Too   little  allow- 
ance is  made  for  the  surprises  of  genius.     We  forget 
that  now  and  then  some  personage   comes  without  a 
summons,  like    a    stray  leader  from   the   skies ;   that 
works   appear  under   adverse   circumstances,  so  new, 
so  strong,  so  revolutionary,  as   to   seem  inspired  cre- 
ations,—  men  and  works  that  overleap  the  stages  of 
development,    that    demand    the    spiritual  factor,    the 
personal  equation,  the  allowance  for  exception,  in  the 
problem   of    national    growth.      In  the   absence  of  a 
sunlit   atmosphere,    they   shine   by  inward   light,    and 
communicate   heat   and   lustre   to   their  surroundings. 
When  a  link  in  the  chain  of  evolution  is  missing,  such 
are  the  forces  that  make   up  for  it.      But  there   are 
other  forces,  and  certain  modes  of  intellectual  effort, 
which  assist  growth  and  somewhat  forestall  the  ordi- 
nary process.      Even    criticism   may  do  a  share,  and 


Law  of 
environ- 
ment ; 


and  the 
factors 
-which 
modify  Us 
effect. 


EARLY  AND  RECENT  CONDITIONS. 


Matters 
first  to  be 
considered. 


Question  of 
a  Home- 
School  and 
its  charac- 
teristics. 


Essential 
quality. 


often  by  penetrative  study  of  the  leaders  that  reflect 
or  stimulate  the  various  tendencies  of  a  people's  ide- 
ality. Of  course  a  poet  must  represent  his  age  and 
habitat ;  a  Grecian  temple  beside  an  Alleghanian 
trout-brook  might  be  lovely,  but  surely  would  be  out 
of  place  and  date.  It  is  now  my  province  to  discover 
what  special  aids  the  poets  of  America  have  expe- 
rienced, and  what  hindrances.  In  no  modern  coun- 
try has  ideality  been  more  retarded  than  in  our  own ; 
and  I  think  that  certain  restrictions  have  peculiarly 
limited  production  in  the  field  of  Poetry,  —  the  chief 
of  imaginative  arts.  Yet  I  see  that,  in  spite  of  these, 
the  ultimate  rise  of  an  American  school  of  poetry 
was  swift  and  strong,  and  that  its  chiefs  have  had 
their  aids  no  less  than  their  obstacles,  and  have 
bravely  confronted  the  latter.  And  thus  we  are 
brought  directly  to  the  preliminary  issue. 


II. 

Much  has  been  written  of  late  upon  the  topic  of 
our  native  literature.  Is  there  a  distinctly  American 
school  ?  If  not,  when  and  where  shall  we  look  for 
one  ?  What  are,  or  should  be,  its  special  character- 
istics? These  and  similar  questions  are  frequently 
and  somewhat  vaguely  discussed. 

Now,  it  is  first  to  be  observed  that  the  radical 
quality  of  any  national  school,  in  any  country  or  pe- 
riod, does  not  wholly  depend  upon  the  types,  per- 
sonages, localities,  and  other  materials  utilized  by  its 
artists  and  men  of  letters  ;  and  this  is  especially  true 
with  regard  to  the  work  of  a  poet,  in  distinction  from 
that  of  a  painter.  The  specific  tone  of  the  former 
artist  is  not  derived  from  the  images  which  his  gen- 
ius informs  with  life,  and  from   the   plots   that  serve 


NATIONAL   QUALITY. 


R.  G. 

White,  in 
the  N.  Y. 
Times, 
Feb.  i, 

1880. 


his  expression  of  the  thought,  passion,  im; 
of  his  people  and  time.  Mere  reliance  upBn!>tft9se<  r 
will  not  suffice.  Even  a  painter  might  devot&hip  life 
to  copying  the  groups  he  finds  in  his  own  streeh^the 
streets  themselves,  and  the  fields  and  woods  beyoncT 
them,  yet  not  produce  an  original  art,  nor  execute  it 
in  a  fresh  and  native  way.  The  mere  dialect  and 
legends  of  a  province  or  section  are  powerless  to 
convey  their  essential  quality  to  the  song  of  a  poet 
who  calls  them  to  his  aid.  Mr.  Grant  White,  there- 
fore, was  perfectly  right  when  he  suggested,  for  these 
and  other  reasons,  that  it  is  the  spirit,  not  the  letter, 
which  giveth  life ;  that  we  must  pay  regard  to  the 
flavor,  rather  than  to  the  form  and  color,  of  the  fruit, 
—  to  the  distinctive  character,  not  the  speech  and 
aspect,  of  the  personage.  Unless  the  feeling  of  our 
home-poet  be  novel,  his  vision  a  fresh  and  distinctive 
vision,  —  unless  these  are  radically  different  from  the 
French,  or  German,  or  even  the  English  feeling  and 
vision,  —  they  are  not  American,  and  our  time  has 
not  yet  come. 

But  I  am  not  with  this  distinguished  writer  in  his 
further  claim  that  we  still  are  essentially  English,  and 
shall  be  so  for  a  long  series  of  years  to  come;  that 
our  literature,  like  the  language  we  inherit,  is  wholly 
English,  and  must  remain  so  for  centuries,  until  "  An- 
glo-Saxon and  Hollander  and  German  and  Irishman 
and  negro  and  Chinese  shall  have  so  blended  their 
blood  .  .  .  that  from  the  fusion  a  new  race  shall  have 
sprung."  What  I  first  call  to  mind  is  that  there  are 
few  Americans,  even  those  of  but  one  remove,  who 
are  not  instantly  recognized  abroad  as  being  very  dif- 
ferent from  Englishmen,  not  only  with  respect  to  fea- 
ture, mould,  and  speech,  —  which  vary  according  to  the 
sections  from  which  they  come,  —  but  in  their  senti- 


A  reserva- 
tion. 


EARLY  AND  RECENT  CONDITIONS. 


"The 

Scarlet 

Letter." 


A  distinc- 
tive na- 
tional 
character. 


ment,  modes  of  thought  and  feeling,  and  way  of  look- 
ing at  things.  In  both  outward  and  inward  traits 
they  are  pronounced  distinctively  un-English  and 
"American,"  however  divided  among  themselves. 
Again,  by  so  much  as  the  style  is  the  man,  I  believe 
that  the  literary  product  of  this  new  people  differs 
from  the  literary  product  of  the  English,  or  any  other 
people  of  the  Old  World,  and  I  hope  to  make  that 
difference  clear  in  the  course  of  these  chapters.  And 
I  will  remark,  in  passing,  that  "  The  Scarlet  Letter," 
a  romance  which  Mr.  White  cited  in  illustration,  to 
me  appears  thoroughly  un-English  in  its  mystical 
temper,  and  its  undertone  and  atmosphere ;  if  not 
broadly  American,  it  is  locally  so,  —  the  fruit  and  out- 
giving of  the  New  England  sentiment  that  brooded 
in  its  author's  spirit,  and  of  which  it  is  a  soul-wrought 
witness  and  dramatic  chronicle. 

In  fine,  recognizing  the  error  of  those  who,  by  a 
forced  effort,  would  anticipate  creations  that  will  come 
only  of  themselves,  or  through  the  natural  impulse  of 
foreordained  artists,  I  also  perceive  that  already,  in 
various  walks  of  art,  and  in  none  more  than  in  that 
to  which  our  present  study  is  devoted,  we  have  ex- 
hibited the  new  and  broad  results,  both  of  acclima- 
tion and  of  a  blending  process,  to  which  the  ruling 
divisions  of  our  population  thus  far  have  been  sub- 
jected. Equally  obvious  are  the  minor  distinctive 
phases,  which,  on  the  other  hand,  arise  from  the  dif- 
ferentiation of  the  American  people  by  influences  that, 
in  widely  separated  districts,  have  acted  upon  their 
inhabitants  from  the  early  settlements  to  the  present 
time.  The  first-named  phenomena  are  national,  while 
those  of  the  latter  class  may  be  termed  sectional ;  but 
all  are  American,  whether  they  appertain  to  the  whole, 
or  to  the  subdivisions,  of  our  intellectual  yield. 


THE  AMERICAN  TYPE. 


The  type  first  suggested,  that  of  a  broadly  national 
character,  is  plainly  incomplete,  and  has  wide  room  for 
maturer  development.  Let  us  measure  it  only  at  its 
worth.  A  restless  and  ill-adjusted  spirit  still  pervades 
the  heterogeneous  elements  of  our  nationality.  Here 
is  a  country  as  large  as  all  Europe,  embracing  zones 
as  far  apart,  in  physical  attributes,  as  those  of  Norway 
and  Sicily.  Here  are  the  emigrants  or  descendants 
of  every  people  in  Europe,  —  to  go  no  farther,  —  and 
all  their  languages,  and  customs,  and  traditions,  and 
modes  of  feeling,  at  one  time  or  another,  have  come 
with  them.  Hence  our  unconscious  habitude  of  va- 
riety, the  disinclination  to  cling  to  one  way  of  life 
or  thought  until  its  perfect  conclusion.  There  is  a 
ferment  in  new  blood.  The  American  travels,  and 
at  first  is  delighted  with  the  color  and  flavor  of  the 
region  to  which  he  has  come,  but  soon  wearies  of  them, 
and  pushes  on  to  some  new  place  where  novel  char- 
acteristics can  be  enjoyed.  This  is  observable  of  all 
Anglo-Saxons,  capricious  yet  steadfast  as  they  are, 
but  more  so  among  ourselves  than  with  respect  to  our 
British  kinsmen.  America  has  absorbed  the  traits 
of  many  lands  and  people  ;  the  currents  still  set  this 
way ;  our  modern  intercourse  with  the  world  at  large 
is  close  and  unintermitting,  so  that  the  raw  ingredients 
of  our  national  admixture  are  supplied  quite  as  rapidly 
as  the  whirl  and  stir  of  the  popular  system  can  trit- 
urate and  commingle  them.  It  is  too  much,  then, 
to  expect  that  our  art  or  song,  from  whatever  section 
either  may  come,  will  exhibit  a  quality  specifically 
American  in  the  sense  that  the  product  of  Italy  is 
Italian,  or  that  of  France  is  French.  At  this  dis- 
tance, we  who  watch  others  as  we  are  watched  our- 
selves can  readily  see  that  the  same  causes  which  make 
our  civilization  assume  the  composite  type  are  blend- 


Its  incom* 
pleteness 
must  be 
acknowl- 
edged. 


The  na- 
tional ele- 
ments : 


8 


EARLY  AND  RECENT  CONDITIONS. 


To  what 
extent  ho- 
mogene- 
ous* 


A  recog- 
nizable 
type. 


Foreign 
criticism. 


ing  the  politics,  manners,  dress,  art,  and  letters  of  the 
several  European  countries,  —  and  this,  however  dis- 
tinct their  nationalities,  in  proportion  to  the  growth 
of  travel  and  interculture.  But  the  United  States  are 
homogeneous  in  what  pertains  to  the  language  and 
methods  of  their  master-race,  and  to  this  extent  their 
homogeneity  is  definitely  assured.  Concerning  the 
primal  influences  that  affect  the  general  tone  of  art 
and  literature,  mutual  communication  and  understand- 
ing are  so  perfect  that  any  changes  or  advances  are 
almost  simultaneous  throughout  our  territory.  This 
being  the  situation,  foreign  critics  are  not  far  wrong 
in  requiring  that  our  home-product  shall  differ  from 
their  own ;  that  it  shall  be,  at  least,  un-European,  — 
manifestly  of  the  New  World,  and  not  of  the  Old. 
Return  to  a  consideration  of  the  family  likeness, 
physical  and  mental,  which  instantly  is  apparent  to 
others  as  we  visit  the  mother-land.  If  we  ourselves 
are  unconscious  of  it,  or  wonted  to  it  ;  if  the  air  and 
fashion  that  we  display  seem  to  us  imperceptible  or 
of  small  account,  they  are  not  so  regarded  by  our 
kinsmen,  or  by  the  guest  who  lands  upon  these  shores. 
The  stranger  quickly  perceives,  and  holds  at  its  value, 
the  general,  the  national,  type.  Material  and  psy- 
chological changes  are  correlative,  and  almost  equally 
sure  of  external  recognition. 

So  far,  therefore,  from  demanding  absolute  novelty 
in  structure,  language,  or  theme,  of  our  home-poet,  it 
is  the  duty  of  the  critic  to  value  the  Americanism 
which  great  and  small  have  displayed  in  quality  of 
tone,  and  in  faithful  expression  of  the  dominant  pop- 
ular moods.  Thus  considered,  it  will  be  found  they 
have  not  fallen  short.  Those  arbiters  of  foreign  taste 
who  do  not  acknowledge  this  may  be  suspected  of  some 
unconscious    insincerity.      Not   every  mother  as    fair 


LOCAL  PRODUCTIONS. 


and  ripe  as  England,  however  affectionate,  can  look 
with  perfect  complacence  upon  a  daughter  growing 
to  her  own  height  and  beauty  before  the  world.  To 
her  eyes  the  maiden  is  still  a  child,  and  she  owns  with 
reluctance  and  very  slowly  that  child's  attractiveness 
and  the  claims  of  her  suitors.  One  by  one  the  points 
of  youth  and  inferiority,  brought  against  America,  have 
worn  away,  and  now,  when  so  many  of  us  grant  Eng- 
land this  last  defence  of  her  supremacy,  it  is  with  the 
respect  due  a  mother,  and  with  a  courtesy  perchance 
no  less  insincere  than  her  avowal.  The  new  Ameri- 
canism is  not  so  modest  as  to  surrender  any  freehold  or 
to  be  unconscious  of  its  smallest  advantages. 

The  less  essential  novelties  of  structure,  theme,  and 
dialect  already  are.  discernible  in  the  yield  that  rep- 
resents our  territorial  subdivision.  The  local  flavor 
of  our  genre  and  provincial  literature  has  long  been 
unquestioned,  but  our  conceit  was  not  overfed  by  an 
acknowledgment  almost  wholly  due  to  grotesque  and 
humorous  exploits,  —  a  welcome  such  as  a  prince  in 
his  breathing-hour  might  give  to  a  new-found  jester 
or  clown.  American  poetry,  however,  has  not  repre- 
sented the  popular  life  of  our  continental  slopes  and 
corners  merely  in  their  coarser  traits.  These  sections 
are  not  so  isolated  as  the  Scottish  highlands,  or  as 
those  mountain  nooks  in  Italy,  where  peasant  women 
contentedly  whirl  the  spindle,  and  never  visit  the 
plains  that  glisten  below ;  yet  some  of  them  are  long- 
settled  and  have  an  abiding  population,  with  habits 
more  or  less  confirmed.  Where  there  is  the  least  of 
change  and  interruption,  and  the  colonial  blood  is 
most  unmixed,  the  national  ennui  does  not  prevail ; 
the  sentiment  and  instinct  of  the  people,  if  limited, 
are  clearly  understood,  and  have  been  fairly  expressed 
in  poetry  and  prose  romance. 


Minor 
character- 
istics. 


IO 


EARLY  AND  RECENT  CONDITIONS. 


The  new 
A  meri- 
canism. 


Republi- 
canism in 
these  re- 
spects is  on 
trial. 


In  a  certain  sense,  it  is  natural  for  the  citizen  of 
so  vast  and  various  a  country  to  find  his  patriotism 
and  his  gift  of  expression  respond  most  easily  to  the 
appeals  of  his  own  locality.  There  is  still  a  lagging 
behind  full  nationality,  just  as  Federal  supremacy/  in 
the  hearts  of  a  great  multitude,  gives  precedence  to 
"  state  rights."  Yet  there  are  signs  of  growth  toward 
an  imagination  in  keeping  with  our  political  enlarge- 
ment. The  new  Americanism,  with  relation  to  liter- 
ature and  the  arts  of  beauty  and  construction,  is  seen 
in  the  very  search  for  it,  in  the  closer  inspection  of 
our  own  ground,  in  our  more  realistic  method,  in  the 
genuine  quality  of  our  modern  poetry  and  creative 
prose,  so  much  more  indigenous  than  the  work  of  the 
Neo-Romantic  English  school,  and  presenting  so  fresh 
a  contrast  to  the  poetry  and  prose  of  our  early  peri- 
ods ;  finally,  in  the  greater  value  set  upon  our  home- 
workers,  upon  our  ventures  for  ourselves.  It  is  curi- 
ous to  note  the  minor  symptoms  of  this  change. 
As  time  has  lessened  our  yearning  for  the  mother- 
country,  native  Americans  less  fondly  cling  to  the 
old  words  and  traditions.  The  landlords  who  cater 
to  foreign  or  provincial  guests  still  give  English  and 
French  names  to  their  hotels,  and  a  fresh  English 
colony,  after  the  manner  of  our  ancestors,  calls  its 
village  Rugby  ;  but  the  reproach  of  this  barrenness 
of  nomenclature  is  fast  passing  away,  and  the  time 
has  come  when  the  declaration  of  our  independence 
may  be  made  to  include  the  fields  of  literature  and 
art. 

And  indeed,  if  art,  under  the  free  system  of  a  de- 
mocracy, does  not  show  in  time  as  proud  a  result  — 
whether  in  the  product  of  its  disciples  or  in  the 
wealth  of  its  libraries  and  museums  —  as  in  countries 
where   it  is  fed   by  governmental  patronage  and  sub- 


RESTRICTIONS  OF  OUR  POETS. 


II 


sidies,  then  our  republicanism,  upon  its  aesthetic  side, 
is  itself  a  failure.  So  far  as  poetry  is  concerned,  I 
see  that  we  have  already  had  the  first  period  of  what 
may  be  called,  for  want  of  a  better  term,  a  true 
American  school.  I  see  that  this  school  was  slow  to 
rise,  until  suddenly  a  number  of  its  leaders  appeared 
at  once  ;  that  its  first  tuneful  season  has  been  com- 
pleted, so  that,  in  the  temporary  pause,  we  now,  for 
the  first  time,  may  honestly  recount  its  triumphs. 
But  that  our  lyrical  product  has  not  been  so  obvious 
as  our  material  grandeur,  that  it  has  put  on  a  na- 
tional type  less  complete  than  the  types  of  various 
sections,  that  it  has  been  but  a  delightful  promise  of 
what  a  new  song  will  create  for  us  when  poetry 
comes  in  vogue  again  throughout  the  world,  —  this, 
too,  is  not  to  be  gainsaid.  Before  examining  what 
we  have  done,  let  us  see  what  we  have  not  been 
able  to  do  until  recently,  and  what  not  at  all.  It  is 
time  to  indicate  the  early  and  later  restrictions  that 
have  hemmed  in  the  poets,  and  limited  the  poetry, 
of  the  Western  world. 

III. 

The  poets  themselves,  naturally,  would  be  slow  to 
perceive  the  causes  of  their  difficulties.  The  brain 
is  not  always  conscious  of  its  own  malaise.  Never- 
theless, I  think  that  to  each  true  singer,  as  he  ar- 
rived at  a  period  when  his  intellectual  faculty  sought 
the  rationale  of  his  successes  and  failures,  the  facts 
have  been  more  or  less  apparent.  The  idealism  of 
this  people  was  long  retarded  by  certain  interdicts, 
and  at  last  forced  its  way  to  expression  under  very 
baffling  and  perplexing  conditions,  some  of  which  are 
even  now  felt.     So  far  as  the   embarrassments  pecul- 


Early  and 
later    Re- 
strictions 
of  the 
American 
poets. 


12 


EARLY  AND  RECENT  CONDITIONS. 


Thefirst 
two  hun- 
dred years, 


iar  to  the  new  epoch  are  involved,  it  was  a  percep- 
tion of  these  that  led  me  to  observe  their  bearing  on 
the  poets  of  England,  before  venturing  to  write  upon 
our  own.  To  these  matters  I  shall  again  refer,  after 
some  mention  of  the  absolute  barriers  which  shut  out 
the  Muses  from  these  shores  until  so  late  a  time. 

For  two  centuries,  in  truth,  the  situation  here  was 
so  adverse  to  art,  and  especially  to  song,  as  to  nul- 
lify even  our  complement  to  Taine's  theory ;  to  stifle, 
or  to  divert  to  other  than  ideal  uses,1  any  exceptional 
genius  that  existed,  and  that  would  have  made  its 
way  against  restrictions  not  of  themselves  quite  as 
exceptional.  The  modified  results  of  this  situation 
may  still  be  observed.  As  a  rider  to  all  I  have  said 
of  the  essential  superiority  of  art  to  its  materials,  we 
must  not  fail,  also,  to  consider  the  repugnance  of  the 
general  mind  to  disassociate  things  and  ideas,  —  to 
separate  the  spirit  of  a  work  from  what  is  used  for 
its  construction.  There  is  a  natural  expectation  that 
the  art  of  a  country  will  convey  to  us  something  of 
the  national  history,  aspect,  social  law.  On  the  whole, 
it  has  been  the  instinct  of  masters  to  avail  them- 
selves, so  far  as  might  be,  in  their  plots,  manners, 
and  scenery,  of  the  region  nearest  them  ;  a  wise  in- 
stinct, through  which  they  reach  closely  to  nature, 
and  are  more  sure  to  make  their  work  of  interest 
elsewhere  and  afterward.  Shakespeare's  men  are  apt 
to  be   Englishmen,  though  they  may  figure   in  Illyria 


1  I  am  not  considering  the  question  whether  a  poet  of  the 
first  rank  may,  or  may  not,  find  his  natural  vocation  under  the 
most  adverse  conditions,  and  overcome  them  ;  but  am  trying  to 
see  why  a  general  poetic  movement,  embracing  many  true  poets, 
was  deferred  until  Longfellow,  Poe,  Whittier,  Emerson,  Lowell, 
Whitman,  and  others  of  their  generation  appeared  almost  simul- 
taneously. 


THE   COLONISTS. 


13 


or  Rome.  Nor  is  it  entirely  through  unfairness  and 
caprice  that  the  free  range  allowed  to  English  poets 
has  been  denied  our  own.  The  Old  World  has  drawn 
its  countries  together,  like  elderly  people  in  a  tacit 
alliance  against  the  strength  of  youth  which  cannot 
return  to  them,  the  fresh,  rude  beauty  and  love  which 
they  may  not  share.  There  is,  also,  something  worth 
an  estimate  in  the  division  of  an  ocean  gulf,  that 
makes  us  like  the  people  of  a  new  planet ;  and  when 
those  on  the  other  side  hear  us  sounding  the  changes 
upon  familiar  themes,  with  voices  not  unlike  their 
own,  they  well  may  feel  as  if  the  highest  qualities  of 
our  song  were  not  full  compensation  for  its  lack  of 
"something  rich  and  strange."  A  response  may  fairly 
be  expected  to  the  search  for  novelty,  to  the  curious 
yearning  of  those  who  look  to  us  from  across  the 
seas. 

Here  begin  the  special  restrictions  of  an  American 
poet.  He  represents,  it  is  true,  the  music  and  ardor 
of  a  new  country,  of  a  land  his  race  has  peopled 
for  two  hundred  and  fifty  years,  a  nation  that  has 
completed  its  first  century.  A  new  land,  a  new  na- 
tion, yet  not  forced,  like  those  which  have  progressed 
from  barbarism  to  a  sense  of  art,  to  create  a  lan- 
guage and  literature  of  their  own;  a  new  land  with 
an  old  language,  a  new  nation  with  all  the  literature 
and  traditions  behind  it  of  the  country  from  whose 
colonies  it  has  sprung.  While  the  thought  and  learn- 
ing of  this  people  began  in  America  just  where  it 
had  arrived  in  the  mother-land  at  the  dates  of  the 
Jamestown  and  Plymouth  settlements,  the  physical 
state  and  environment  of  Americans  were  those  of 
men  who  find  themselves  encountering  the  primitive 
nature  of  a  savage  world;  with  this  difference,  that 
they  were  equipped   for  the   struggle,  not  as  an  abo- 


Novelty  of 
the  situa- 
tion. 


14 


EARLY  AND  RECENT  CONDITIONS. 


The  "  Co- 
lonial " 
restric- 
tion: 


riginal  race,  but  with  the  logic,  courage,  experience,  of 
the  civilization  behind  them.  All  the  drags,  the  an- 
chorage, the  limitations,  involved  in  the  word  "  colo- 
nial" retarded  a  new  ideality.  The  colonial  restric- 
tion has  been  well  determined.  It  made  the  western 
lyre,  until  the  period  covered  by  this  survey,  a  mech- 
anism to  echo,  without  fresh  and  true  feeling,  notes 
that  came  from  over  sea.  It  so  occupied  this  people 
with  a  stern,  steadfast,  ingenious,  finally  triumphant 
contest  with  Nature  that  their  epic  passion  was  ab- 
sorbed in  the  clearing  of  forests,  the  bridging  of  rivers, 
the  conquest  of  savage  and  beast,  the  creation  of  a 
free  government;  and  this  labor  is  not  yet  ended, — 
it  goes  on  with  larger  cohorts  and  immensely  widen- 
ing power.  But  the  imagination  never  dies,  and  when 
our  first  leisure  came  for  its  exercise  it  was  awakened 
by  contact  with  the  nature  thus  tamed,  —  by  commun- 
ion with  the  broadest  panorama  of  woods  and  hills 
and  waters,  under  the  most  radiant  skies,  that  civil- 
ized man  has  ever  found  himself  confronting.  Pio- 
neers in  art  and  poetry  here  caught  their  inspiration, 
and  naturally  the  field  of  painting  was  the  first  to 
give  token  of  novel  results.  The  very  ease  with 
which  books  containing  the  world's  best  literature 
were  obtainable  in  the  backwoods  made  our  early 
writers  copyists.  The  painters,  meanwhile,  had  to  la- 
ment the  absence  of  galleries  in  this  country,  and 
their  own  inability  to  go  abroad  and  study.  Thrown 
upon  themselves,  and  deficient  in  technical  knowl- 
edge, they  sought  for  models  in  the  nature  about 
them ;  and  thus  began  our  landscape-school  of  paint- 
ing, the  work  of  which,  however  rude  and  defective, 
was  more  original  than  the  verse  wherewith  it  was 
contemporary. 

A  poet  of  the  first  rank  is  not  given  to  every  coun- 


its  dissim- 
ilar effects 
upon  Po- 
etry and 
Painting. 


A   BARREN  TIME. 


*5 


try,  nor  to  every  age.     But  poets  of  gifts  approaching 
those  of  our  living  favorites  doubtless  have  been  born 
in  America,  according  to  Nature's   average,  at  differ- 
ent  times   of  our  history.     Until  recently,  the  stimu- 
lants  of   their  genius   must  have   been   wanting.     It 
may  be  that  the  people  had  no   real   need   of   them, 
and   song   and   art,  like   invention,  come  not  without 
necessity.      What  poetry  was   latent   here   and  there 
does  not  concern  us.     The  stone  on  which  our  colo- 
nial life  was  founded  was  frigid  as  an  arctic  boulder, 
—  there  was  no  molecular  motion  to  give  out  life  and 
heat.     Who  were   the   mute,  inglorious   Miltons?     Of 
what  kind  is  the  verse  that  was  produced  ?     Does  it 
move  us?     Is  it  poetry?      However  fine  the  cast  of 
individuals,  the  effect  of  a  perpetual  contest  with  the 
elemental,  often  sinister,  always  gigantic  forces   of   a 
new  continent  would  be  so  adverse  to  art,  so  directly 
in  the  line  of  necessity  and  temporal  gain,  as  to  sti- 
fle  their  poetic   fire,  to   develop   a  heroism  that  was 
stolid  and   unimaginative,  to   mark  persons  and  com- 
munities with   sternness  and  angularity,  leading  them 
to  a  homely  gauge  of  values,  not  wont  to  esteem  the 
ideal  at  its  true  worth.      The  aspiration  of   a  refined 
nature  would  seem  to  the  multitude  foolishness  and  a 
stumbling-block.      For  a  prolonged  season  the  art  of 
writing  verse  was  almost  solely  a   luxury  of  the   pro- 
fessional classes  in  America,  and   its  relics  bear  wit- 
ness to  their  pedantry  and  dulness.     It  is  not  to  the 
wigged   and   gowned   that  we   instinctively   listen  for 
the    music   and    freedom   of   creative    song.      And   if 
poetry  even  in  England,  from  the  middle  of  the  sev- 
enteenth century  to  the  close   of  the  eighteenth,  stu- 
pidly fashioned   itself   upon   the   models   of  worn-out 
schools,  how  should   it   do   more   in    England's  colo- 
nies, that  brought  hither  certain  shoots  of  taste   and 


Latentgen- 
ius  not  to 
be  consid- 
ered. 


Colonial 
pedantry. 


16 


EARLY  AND  RECENT  CONDITIONS. 


Prolonged 
sterility. 


The  first 
stages  of 
Republi- 
canism 
opposed  to 
ideal  art. 


A  leveller. 


learning  from  the  Old  World,  and  found  it  hard  to 
protect  them  at  all  in  the  sterile  wild-woods  of  the 
New? 

Such  was  the  nature  of  the  barriers  which,  in  the 
early  and  later  colonial  periods,  absolutely  defied  the 
overleaping  of  a  single  notable  poet.  We  find  little 
of  more  significance  in  the  transition  era  of  the  Rev- 
olution, although  a  nation  took  on  life.  No  poetry 
was  begotten  in  the  rage  of  that  heroic  strife ;  its  hu- 
mor, hatred,  hope,  suffering,  prophecy,  were  feebly 
uttered,  as  far  as  verse  was  concerned,  in  the  mode 
and  language  inherited  years  before  from  the  coarsest 
English  satirists.  There  came  at  last  a  time  when 
the  nation  felt  itself  in  vigorous  youth,  and  began  to 
have  a  song.  Some  few  original  notes  were  heard 
among  our  pipings.  The  positive  barriers  were  broken, 
and  in  their  stead  came  the  restrictions  that  are  felt 
in  some  degree  down  to  the  present  time. 

At  the  outset  it  may  be  said  of  Republicanism  it- 
self—  in  which  our  pride  and  faith  are  based,  and 
which  we  trust  is  ultimately  to  promote  a  literature 
and  an  art  not  below  the  standard  of  our  bravest 
hope  —  that  it  originally  somewhat  lessened  the  ardor 
of  our  poets,  or  kept  this  within  temperate  bounds. 
There  was  a  craving  for  ideality  of  a  certain  kind, 
and  in  our  liberal  regions  the  sense  of  utility  was  not 
the  sole  controlling  power.  There  was  a  wide  man- 
ifestation of  that  which  bears  to  pure  ideality  an  in- 
ferior relationship.  Our  system  diffused  the  intelli- 
gence which  lifts  our  people  quite  above  the  dulness 
and  stolidity  of  the  middle  classes  elsewhere,  but  did 
not  speedily  bring  them  to  the  pitch  of  high  emotion. 
It  is  a  leveller,  and  in  its  early  stages  raises  a  multi- 
tude to  the  level  of  the  commonplace ;  so  that  there 
have  been  few  tall  heads  of  grain  above  the  even  field. 


OUR  REPUBLICANISM. 


*7 


The  general  independence  and  comfort  have  not  bred 
those  dramatic  elements  which  imply  conditions  of 
splendor  and  squalor,  glory  and  shame,  triumph  and 
despair.  In  their  stead  we  have  the  spirit  of  the  Amer- 
ican homesteads,  and  the  loss  to  the  artist  of  some 
darker  contrast,  that  would  make  their  virtue  and  piety 
more  inspiring,  certainly  is  their  gain.  In  no  other 
country  are  there  so  many  happy  little  households,  — 
although  there  is  a  curious  foreign  belief  to  the  con- 
trary, derived  from  travelling  acquaintanceship.  This 
must  be  so  in  the  one  land  where  every  man  can  own 
a  portion  of  the  soil  and  be  a  freeholder,  and  where 
a  man's  toil  meets  no  doubtful  reward.  The  popular 
thrift  and  freedom,  joined  with  the  necessity  for  labor 
to  steadily  maintain  them,  are  not  at  first  productive 
of  the  tragic  or  entrancing  dreams  of  effective  art. 
Wisely  bettering  their  material  chances,  men  are  too 
busy  to  feel  a  spiritual  want.  And  the  labor  of  our 
representative  men  is  so  extended  and  heroic  as  of 
itself  to  feed  the  popular  imagination.  In  default  of 
Homer,  we  at  least  have  Hector  and  Achilles;  and 
the  peerless  exploits  of  our  engineers,  capitalists,  dis- 
coverers, speak  louder  than  a  minstrel's  words.  In 
all  this  amazing  drama  of  triumphant  effort  and  or- 
ganization ;  in  the  adjustment  of  our  political  theory, 
dependent  on  statesmanship,  and  leading  to  oratory 
and  journalism  rather  than  to  art  and  song;  in  the 
despotism  of  our  social  unwritten  law  that  an  Amer- 
ican must  be  a  good  citizen  first  of  all,  and  that  the 
first  duties  of  a  citizen  are  to  rear  and  maintain  a 
family;  in  the  implied  doubt  as  to  the  sanity  of  en- 
during privations  for  the  sake  of  the  ideal,  when,  by 
deserting  it,  a  practical  success  may  be  had,  — amid 
all  this  the  man  of  genius  has  too  often  betaken  him- 
self to  the  work  of  his  neighbors,  and  those  who  keep 


The  Amer- 
ican home- 
stead. 


Material 
effort. 


i8 


EARLY  AND  RECENT  CONDITIONS. 


Diffusion 
of  the  com- 
monplace. 


Technical 
difficulties; 
which, 
however, 
do  not 
greatly  af- 
fect the  lyr- 
ic ^oet. 


To  what 
ixtent  the 


faith  with  the  Muse  have  found  themselves  perplexed 
and  out  of  time.  Nevertheless,  I  repeat  that,  up  to 
a  certain  grade,  our  people  have  required  their  poetry, 
—  just  as  they  will  have  their  votes,  their  seats  in 
church,  their  county  papers,  and  the  piano  or  melo- 
deon  in  every  house.  A  throng  of  minor  singers  have 
answered  to  the  demand  with  very  natural  and  unaf- 
fected voices.  The  select  few,  whose  efforts  placed 
them  above  their  comrades,  often  have  suffered  from 
the  undue  favor  awarded  their  minor  and  ordinary 
productions. 

These  adverse  influences,  belonging  to  the  soil  and 
air,  perhaps  have  not  been  so  directly  comprehended 
by  the  American  poet  as  the  obvious  and  technical 
impediments  which  had  force  when  he  essayed  a  sus- 
tained and  novel  work. 

In  considering  these,  let  us  acknowledge  that  they 
do  not  greatly  concern  the  emotional  and  lyric  poet. 
He  is  at  no  loss  for  a  method  or  a  theme ;  the  latter 
is  at  once  the  cause  and  modulator  of  his  song.  Per- 
sonal joys  and  griefs,  special  occurrences  in  history 
or  related  to  the  individual  life,  —  these  have  inspired, 
and  do  inspire,  the  briefer  poems,  the  lyrics  which 
still  make  up  the  choicest  portion  of  our  verse.  Their 
range  is  wide,  from  the  simple  fireside  ballad  to  the 
impassioned  ode,  and  my  estimate  of  their  remarkable 
freshness  and  variety  will  be  given  more  fully  here- 
after. At  present  I  would  say  that  among  them  are 
many  admirable  of  their  kind,  and  that  the  relative 
number  of  these  is  not  less  than  can  be  found  in  the 
popular  verse  of  other  lands.  An  American  critic  fails 
in  discernment  or  independence  who  does  not  see  this 
and  avow  it. 

But,  while  the  lyrical  songster  need  not  cast  about 
for  a  subject,  and  does  not  even   look  into  his  heart 


PRIMITIVE  ABSENCE   OF  THEME. 


19 


to  write,  —  for  his  heart  has  already  moved  him,  — 
the  ambitious  poet  is  best  equipped  for  a  larger  ef- 
fort by  some  adequate  theme  awaiting  his  hand.  The 
moment  arrives  when  poets  of  the  upper  cast  desire 
to  forego  their  studies  and  brief  lyrical  flights,  and  to 
produce  the  composite  and  heroic  works  that  rank  as 
masterpieces.  These  leaders  often  have  been  arrested, 
with  respect  to  romantic  or  inventive  structures,  by  a 
scarcity  of  home-themes,  no  less  than  by  the  lack  of 
sharp  dramatic  contrast  in  our  equable  American  life. 
I  am  aware  that  this  statement  frequently  is  derided, 
and  that  many  poets,  while  realizing  that  their  prod- 
uct is  too  meagre,  will  not  acknowledge  its  force. 
Others,  and  these  among  our  foremost,  who  have 
thought  to  analyze  their  experience,  confess  that  it 
is  true  in  no  small  measure,  and  have  stated  this 
over  their  own  hands. 

Up  to  a  recent  date,  absence  of  theme  for  a  na- 
tional masterpiece,  for  a  work  belonging  to  our  own 
atmosphere  and  history,  has  been  a  result  of  the 
condition  under  which  we  started.  Original  art  is 
long  deferred  among  a  people  cultured  at  the  outset. 
A  writer  has  well  said  that  "  the  cause  of  the  ab- 
sence of  the  legendary  and  poetic  in  our  early  his- 
tory may  be  attributed  to  the  mental  development 
of  the  colonists,  who  had  already  passed  through 
that  historic  stage."  They  started  at  once  with  both 
church  and  school-house.  The  imagination  was  con- 
trolled by  precedent,  and  "Art  was  cheated  of  its 
birthright."  They  made  little  history  in  a  dramatic 
sense.  What  there  was  of  the  poetic  or  wondrous  in 
their  arduous  compelling  life  had  a  local  range,  — 
such  as  the  trials  for  witchcraft,  finely  utilized  by  New 
England's  great  romancer,  and  too  inadequately,  it 
must  be  owned,  by  her  most  famous  poet.     In  Park- 


tnore  am- 
bitious 
have  felt 
their 
weight. 


Primitive 
absence  of 
theme. 


Otis,  in 
"  Sacred 
and  Con- 
structive 
Art." 


20 


EARLY  AND   RECENT  CONDITIONS. 


"  Evange- 
line." 


Indistinct 
back- 
ground. 


man's  elegant  survey  of  certain  picturesque  epochs  in 
colonial  history,  the  feminine  element,  essential  to 
complete  dramatic  quality,  is  usually  wanting  j  in 
other  annals,  like  those  of  Spanish-American  adven- 
ture, it  scarcely  appears  at  all.  American  antiquity 
is  a  rude  settler's  antiquity  ;  a  homely  fashion  that 
palls,  because  not  long  out  of  date  ;  a  story  every- 
where the  same,  —  furnishing  at  times  the  basis  of 
some  exquisite  idyl,  like  "  Evangeline,"  but  for  none 
too  many  of  the  class.  "  Evangeline "  still  remains 
the  most  notable  of  the  longer  American  poems  ; 
and  how  much  of  that  is  otherwise  than  scenic  and 
idyllic,  and  how  much  of  it  does  not  fit  the  story  to 
the  landscape,  rather  than  the  landscape  to  the  story  ? 
No  material,  no  stirring  theme,  with  all  your  freedom, 
your  conquest,  your  noble  woods  and  waters,  your 
westward  spread  of  men  !  These  are  motives,  acces- 
sories, atmosphere,  often  grander  in  magnitude  than 
elsewhere  to  be  found,  but  not  perforce  more  new. 
The  poetic  instinct  does  not  always  hold  the  macro- 
cosm superior  to  the  microcosm,  the  prairie  to  the 
plain  of  Marathon,  the  Hudson  to  the  Cephisus  or 
the  Tweed.  As  for  latter-day  history,  this  is  not  far 
enough  removed.  From  the  Revolution  to%the  Civil 
War,  the  incidents  of  our  life  and  passion  are  so  re- 
cent and  so  plainly  recorded  as  to  gather  no  lumi- 
nous halo  from  the  too  slight  distance  at  which  we 
observe  them.  The  true  poet  will  profit  by  them  to 
the  uttermost  ;  the  limits  are  to  be  overcome,  but 
still  are  limits  and  in  his  way.  He  is  thrown  upon 
the  necessity  of  inventing  dramatic  themes  for  the 
broader  range  of  poetic  venture.  This  the  great  poets 
always  have  avoided,  for  the  product  of  such  inven- 
tion usually  has  seemed  artificial  and  remote  from 
human  concern. 


LACK  OF  BACKGROUND. 


21 


Bear  in  mind,  also,  that  our  wide-awake  people  are 
removed,  not  only  from  the  superstitions  that  were  a 
religion  to  our  forefathers,  but  from  the  wondercraft 
and  simple  faith  prevailing  among  the  common  folk 
of  other  lands  than  our  own.  The  beautifying  lens 
of  fancy  has  dropped  from  our  eyes.  Where  are  our 
forest  and  river  legends,  our  Lorelei,  our  Venusberg, 
our  elves  and  kobolds  ?  We  have  old-time  customs 
and  traditions,  and  they  are  quaint  and  dear  to  us,  but 
their  atmosphere  is  not  one  in  which  we  freely  move. 
Just  so  with  our  heroism.  No  national  changes  and 
struggles  have  been  of  more  worth  than  our  own,  but 
critics  are  not  far  wrong  who  point  out  that,  how- 
ever lofty  the  action  and  spirit  of  our  latest  crisis, 
heroism  is  not  with  us  so  much  the  chief  business 
that  one  must  be  always  "  enthusiastic  and  on  guard." 
One  of  our  poets  aims  to  be  especially  national.  He 
sings,  upon  theory,  as  the  American  bard  must  sing 
when  the  years  have  died  away.  The  result  is  a 
striking  assumption  of  what  can  only  come  of  itself, 
and  after  long  time  be  past  ;  a  disjointed  series  of 
kaleidoscopic  pieces,  not  constituting  a  master-work, 
but,  with  all  their  strength  and  weakness,  as  unsatis- 
factory as  the  ill-assorted  elements  which  he  strives 
to  represent.  Yet,  even  in  this  effort,  he  is  represent- 
ative and  a  personage  of  mark,  if  not  precisely  in  the 
direction  of  his  own  choice  and  assurance. 

More  clearly  to  understand  how  far,  and  in  what 
way,  our  poets  have  felt  the  lack  of  background,  of 
social  contrasts,  and  of  legendary  and  specific  inci- 
dent, we  may  observe  the  literature  of  some  region 
where  different  conditions  exist.  In  an  isolated  coun- 
try of  established  growth  and  quality,  a  native  genius 
soon  discovers  his  tendency  and  proper  field. 

Look   at    Scotland.      Her    national   melodies   were 


Disen- 
chant- 
ment*. 


Thefor- 
cing  pro- 


22 


EARLY  AND  RECENT  CONDITIONS. 


A  n  illus- 
tration by 
contrast. 


The  poet' Is 
food  and 
fame. 


ready  and  waiting  for  Burns  ;  her  legends,  history, 
traditions,  for  Walter  Scott.  The  popular  tongue,  cos- 
tumes, manners,  all  distinctively  and  picturesquely  her 
own,  affect  the  entire  outcome  of  her  song  and  art. 
Embraced  in  English  literature,  her  literature  is  so  un- 
English  that  it  affords  the  paradigm  we  need.  Enter 
the  cathedral  in  Glasgow.  Within  the  last  thirty 
years  that  edifice  has  been  refitted  throughout  with 
stained  glass,  contributed  by  the  ancient  families  and 
clans.  What  associations  are  called  up  by  the  de- 
vices upon  the  windows  in  the  chancel  and  nave,  and 
in  the  impressive  crypt  below !  Among  all  the  shields 
and  names,  —  those  of  Sterling,  Hay,  Douglas,  Mont- 
rose, Campbell,  Montgomerie,  Lawrie,  Buccleuch, 
Hamilton,  —  not  one  that  is  not  utterly,  purely  Scot- 
tish. Even  in  our  oldest  and  most  characteristic  sec- 
tions in  Virginia  or  New  England,  influences  like 
these  are  discovered  to  no  such  extent.  In  a  cer- 
tain sense,  they  are  not  only  influences,  but  aids  : 
they  move,  they  stimulate,  they  belong  to  the  life  and 
memory  of  the  native  poet,  and  he  avails  himself  of 
them  without  effort  or  consciousness.  Not  that  they 
are  the  essential,  the  imperative  aids.  But  to  be 
without  them  is  a  restriction,  and  one  which  our  first 
genuine  school  of  poets  has  had  more  or  less  to  en- 
dure. 

Strange,  indeed,  if  the  material  wants  of  New 
World  life,  its  utilitarian  test  of  values,  and  the  gen- 
eral conditions  of  a  primitive  democracy  had  not 
forced  our  early  idealists  into  a  struggle  for  existence 
which  even  the  sturdiest  found  it  hard  to  prolong. 
Two  things  are  essential  to  the  poetic  aspiration  that 
results  in  fine  achievement  :  the  sympathetic  applause 
which  ministers  to  the  last  infirmity  of  noble  minds, 
and   the  common  wage  that  enables  a  laborer  to  do 


COPYRIGHT. 


23 


his  work.  The  rewards  of  authorship  have  been  suf- 
ficiently doubtful  and  varying  in  times  before  our 
own.  In  older  lands,  the  poet,  like  his  predecessor 
the  minstrel,  was  at  least  protected  and  nourished  by 
the  good  or  great  to  whom  he  dedicated  his  song. 
Happily  this  kind  of  support  was  from  the  first  im- 
practicable in  a  liberal  republic.  But  it  long  was  im- 
possible, on  material  grounds  alone,  —  although  en- 
thusiasts might  attempt  to  live  upon  love  and  fame 
—  that  any  vigorous  and  prevailing  flood  of  poesy 
should  be  sustained  in  toiling,  practical,  frugal  Amer- 
ica. We  now  know  that  in  art,  as  in  life,  ideal  pro- 
ductiveness follows,  and  does  not  precede,  material 
security  and  wealth.  The  most  creative  eras  of  his- 
toric lands  were  those  when  their  cities  were  the  rich- 
est, when  their  galleons  sought  out  distant  ports,  and 
their  nobles  and  burgesses,  sure  of  life's  needs,  craved 
for  the  luxuries  of  taste  and  emotion.  Literature 
thrives  as  a  means  of  subsistence,  nor  is  poetry  an 
exception  to  the  rule.  The  supply  answers  to  the  de- 
mand. Not  long  ago  in  this  country,  few  books,  ex- 
cept school-books,  were  required  by  the  people  ;  and 
how  should  poetry,  that  looked  from  the  printed  page 
for  its  welcome  and  sustenance,  be  naturally  com- 
posed ?  We  are  speaking  of  an  ethereal  art,  but 
quietly  examining  the  law  of  its  activity. 

It  is,  moreover,  in  America  that  the  popular  in- 
stinct, which  resists  whatever  is  asserted  to  be  a  tax 
upon  knowledge,  has  worked  with  peculiar  force 
against  the  development  of  a  home-school.  So  long 
as  our  purveyors  could  avail  themselves  without  cost 
or  hindrance  of  foreign  master-works,  they  scarcely 
could  be  expected  to  risk  their  means  in  behalf  of 
native  authorship.  Pure  idealists,  men  like  Poe  and 
Hawthorne,  are  little  able  to  push  their  own  fortunes. 


Law  of 
production. 


The  copy- 
right ques- 
tion. 


24 


EARLY  AND  RECENT  CONDITIONS. 


Interna- 
tional 
copyright. 


Disastrous 
effect  upon 
A  merican 
literature. 


Until  a  state  of  law  shall  exist  that  will  induce 
American  publishers,  driven  from  their  distant  for- 
aging-grounds,  to  seek  for  genius  at  home  and  make 
it  available,  the  support  of  our  authors  will  not  be 
so  assured  as  to  tend  "in  the  end  to  the  advance- 
ment of  literature."  International  copyright  at  least 
would  have  made  it  feasible  for  the  poet  to  earn  his 
living  by  general  literary  work,  and  to  reserve  some 
heart  and  thought  for  his  nobler  calling.  Now,  when 
an  organized  movement  at  last  seems  under  way  to- 
ward copyright  reform,  it  still  is  so  hampered  with 
reservations  and  class-interests  that  many  ask  whether 
it  were  not  better  to  have  no  change  at  all  than  to 
have  one  that  is  partial,  and  that  may  postpone  in- 
definitely the  one  thing  needful,  to  wit :  honest  rec- 
ognition of  an  author's  right  of  property  in  his  own 
creations,  without  any  more  limits  of  space  and  time 
than  those  appertaining  to  other  kinds  of  estate. 

Literature  verily  has  been  almost  the  sole  product 
of  human  labor  that  has  not  been  rated  as  the  last- 
ing property  of  the  producer  and  his  heirs  or  assigns. 
This  want  of  permanent  copyright  has  borne  severely 
upon  authors  in  all  countries,  but  most  severely  upon 
those  of  America,  who  have  had  to  await  the  forma- 
tion of  public  taste,  to  create  their  audiences,  and 
who,  while  willing  to  suffer  in  their  own  persons, 
are  less  ready  to  devote  lifetimes  to  the  production 
of  what  will  be  valueless  to  those  whom  they  hold 
most  dear.  The  want  of  international  copyright  has 
been  a  wrong  to  our  brother-writers  in  Europe.  Their 
complaints  are  just ;  their  cry  has  gone  up  for  years. 
Great  as  the  spoliations  have  been  which  they  have 
endured,  the  effect  upon  our  native  literature  and  au- 
thorship has  been  far  more  disastrous.  Our  authors 
themselves  do  not  comprehend  it.     A  few  of  the  great 


AMERICAN  CRITICISM. 


I5 


publishing  houses,  grown  rich  upon  the  system 
reprints,  of  late  have  felt  this  wrong,  and  the  me^fit  - 
heart  and  culture  who  control  them  are  generous 
atoning  for  it.  We  see  them  leaders  in  artistic  and 
literary  movements,  the  friends  of  authors  and  artists, 
receiving  for  their  public  and  private  humanities  our 
warmest  tributes  of  honor  and  affection.  It  is  said 
that  every  wrong  in  this  world  is  surely,  if  slowly, 
righted ;  and  the  wrongs  of  authors  doubtless  will  be 
set  right.  But  who  shall  pick  up  water  spilled  to  the 
ground?  The  writers  of  a  new  generation  will  never 
realize  how  bitter  was  the  bread  eaten  by  those  who 
went  before  them  and  made  their  paths  straight. 

Critical  periods  are  sometimes  un creative,  yet  there 
is  little  doubt  that  our  poetry  has  suffered,  also,  from 
the  lack  of  those  high  and  exquisite  standards  of  criti- 
cism which  have  been  established  in  older  lands.  The 
poet,  the  artist,  alike  need  the  correction  of  a  fine  cen- 
sorship and  the  tonic  of  that  just  appreciation  which 
is  the  promise  of  fame.  American  verse,  within  re- 
cent memory,  has  experienced,  first,  a  popular  favor 
gained  by  its  weakest  and  most  effeminate  sentiment ; 
and,  secondly,  a  rude  exaggeration  of  its  defects,  a  re- 
fusal to  acknowledge  its  value  as  compared  with  that 
of  the  foreign  product,  or  to  consider  its  higher  as- 
pirations as  practicable  and  worthy  of  respect.  The 
people  at  large  have  passed  from  sham  emotion  to 
irreverence,  and  to  a  relish  for  what  is  flippant  and 
ephemeral.  Then,  too,  our  most  sincere  and  pains- 
taking authorities  often  seem  at  a  loss  to  estimate 
the  nature  of  art,  and  criticise  it  from  metaphysical 
or  doctrinarian  points  of  view.  The  poet  or  painter 
feels  the  wrong  and  the  error,  and,  though  he  makes 
no  complaint,  they  tell  upon  his  buoyancy  and  appli- 
cation.    Only  of  late  have  #e  begun  to  look  for  criti- 


fo 


Unsatis- 
factory 
tests  of 
merit. 


26 


EARLY  AND  RECENT  CONDITIONS. 


Criticism 
as  it  should 
be. 


These  local 
and  primi- 
tive diffi- 
culties are 
now  suc- 
ceeded by 
the  gener- 
al restric- 
tions of  the 
new  era. 


cism  which  applies  both  knowledge  and  self-knowl- 
edge to  the  test ;  which  is  penetrative  and  dexterous, 
but  probes  only  to  cure;  which  enters  into  the  soul 
and  purpose  of  a  work,  and  considers  every  factor 
that  makes  it  what  it  is;  —  the  criticism  which,  above 
all,  esteems  it  a  cardinal  sin  to  suffer  a  verdict  to  be 
tainted  by  private  dislike,  or  by  partisanship  and  the 
instinct  of  battle  with  an  opposing  clique  or  school. 
Such  criticism  is  now  essayed,  but  often  is  too  much 
occupied  with  foreign  or  recondite  subjects  to  search 
out  and  foster  what  is  of  worth  among  ourselves. 


IV. 

These,  it  seems  to  me,  have  been  the  local  and  or- 
ganic difficulties  with  which  the  American  poet,  wit- 
tingly or  unwittingly,  has  had  to  contend.  They  are 
not  figments  of  the  brain;  their  force  has  been  real-- 
time and  national  development  alone  have  lessened 
them;  during  the  continuation  of  their  serious  pres- 
sure the  rise  of  poetry  was  delayed.  It  is  curious  to 
note  that,  just  as  their  adverse  influence  began  to  pass 
away,  a  new  class  of  restrictions  came  in  play  through- 
out the  enlightened  world,  affecting  our  own  idealists 
in  common  with  those  of  the  mother-land.  When  I 
long  since  began  to  think  of  the  present  work,  I  saw 
that  the  modern  intellectual  change  was  so  absolute 
that  I  was  compelled  to  seek  for  the  general  conditions 
of  the  period,  and  to  attempt  a  review  of  the  poets 
of  England  before  entering  upon  our  home-field,  in 
order  to  comprehend  justly  the  effect  of  the  new  at- 
mosphere upon  the  spirit  of  poetry  itself.  In  the  first 
chapter  of  the  Victorian  Poets,  certain  perplexing  ele- 
ments are  considered  which  have  made  the  recent 
time  one  to  which  a  hackneyed  word,  "  transitional," 


THE  MODERN  WORLD. 


27 


is  more  correctly  applied  than  to  any  former  period. 
The  new  learning  —  the  passage  from  the  childlike 
and  phenomenal  way  of  regarding  things  to  the  ab- 
solute, scientific  penetration  of  their  true  entities  and 
relations  —  has  directly  told  upon  the  work  of  the  poet, 
requiring  new  language,  imagery,  invention,  as  he 
adapts  himself  to  a  deeper  purpose  and  the  hope  of 
a  sublimer  faith.  I  have  pointed  out,  as  well,  the 
struggles,  devices,  defeats,  and  victories  of  the  Eng- 
lish minstrels  under  the  stress  of  latter-day  iconoclasm 
and  the  invincible  demands  of  modern  thought ;  tak- 
ing into  account,  also,  the  minor  and  obvious  forces 
antagonistic  to  a  devoted  pursuit  of  the  ideal,  —  among 
the  rest  the  world's  material  activity,  displayed  in  la- 
bor, invention,  construction,  —  the  world's  realistic 
eagerness,  that  makes  of  the  newspaper,  the  novel, 
and  the  bulletins  of  science  the  food  and  outlets  of 
the  imagination,  and  renders  mankind  intent  alone 
upon  each  day's  labor,  so  to  hasten  on  the  golden 
year.  .  Reluctant  to  confront  these  ceaseless  and  per- 
turbing manifestations,  until  out  of  them  the  world 
shall  have  derived  a  more  assured  philosophy,  many 
of  the  latest  singers  have  ignored  them  altogether: 
the  weaker  busying  themselves  with  mere  dilettante- 
ism  and  the  technique  of  their  vocation,  the  nobler 
being  devoted  to  the  worship  of  beauty  pure  and  sim- 
ple, and  often  going  back  to  its  early  revelations  and 
the  antique  forms. 


V. 

These  generic  burdens  of  the  age  itself  have  borne 
even  more  severely  upon  American  idealists  than  upon 
their  transatlantic  brethren.  Yet  it  was  when  they 
first  began  to  have   their  weight,  and   not  until  then, 


Cp.  "Vic- 
torian Po- 
ets»:pp. 
7-21. 


Dawn  at 
last. 


28 


EARLY  AND  RECENT  CONDITIONS. 


Special  ad- 
vantages 
of  our 
home-poets. 


A  merican 
landscape. 


that  the  true  light  of  Poetry  in  America  ventured  to 
appear.  Under  the  very  shadow  of  the  whirlwind  it 
brightened  into  dawn.  Possibly  the  new  learning  was 
most  of  all  needed  here,  as  an  offset  to  puritanism, 
superstition,  and  sentimentalism  in  its  mawkish  forms. 
Honest  fact  and  a  search  for  our  own  resources  gave 
an  impulse  to  healthy  inspiration.  But  the  opportu- 
nity for  the  achievements  of  our  leading  poets,  so  fa- 
mous and  beloved  in  their  hoary  years,  really  came 
when  the  specific  restrictions,  to  which  so  much  space 
has  been  here  devoted,  at  last  yielded  measurably  to 
time  and  national  progress.  Coincidently  with  their 
decline,  certain  positive  aids  to  our  lyrical  genius  be- 
came apparent,  and  were  felt,  and  aroused  to  joyous 
activity  its  instinct,  courage,  and  imagination. 

First  of  all,  as  I  have  shown,  the  American  with 
an  eye  for  natural  beauty,  led  by  his  seclusion  to  close 
and  musing  observation,  had  a  subject  for  poetic  ex- 
pression in  the  landscape  of  the  New  World,  by  turns 
impressive,  bewildering,  reposeful,  but  always  beauti- 
ful and  strong.  If  its  primeval  aspect  stupefied  the 
toiling  settlers,  while  its  grandeur  seemed  to  belittle 
humanity  and  to  defer  the  proper  study  of  mankind, 
it  afterward  compelled  our  ideal  recognition,  and  in- 
spired the  early  and  reverent  anthems  of  the  father 
of  our  choir.  Next,  and  most  vital  of  the  elements 
required  for  the  promotion  of  a  home-school,  a  na- 
tional feeling  grew  up  when  the  compactness  and 
growth  of  the  United  States,  as  a  nation,  became  as- 
sured. Half  a  century  was  needed  to  bring  this  feel- 
ing to  the  blossoming  form  of  art.  Meanwhile,  it 
had  been  strengthening  and  finding  expression  in  other 
ways ;  for  example,  in  the  patriotic  eloquence  which 
marked  our  oratory,  and  which  warmed  the  blood  and 
stirred  the  impulse  of  many  a  poetic  youth,  as  he  read 


National 
feeling. 


AIDS  OF  OUR  POETS. 


29 


in  his  school-books  the  speeches  of  the  founders  and 
preservers  of  liberty.  Hence  our  strongest  emotional 
traits,  —  love  of  freedom,  hatred  of  oppression,  respect 
for  ancestral  faith,  the  sense  of  independence  which 
makes  an  American  stand  erect  and  believe  himself 
the  peer  of  any  man,  the  audacity  and  ambition  found 
among  no  other  people ;  finally,  an  adventurous  habit 
of  experimenting  without  much  regard  to  precedent 
or  training.  Out  of  some  of  these  traits  came,  it  is 
true,  a  commonplace  and  widely  scattered  product  in 
literature.  But  if  a  host  of  writers  ended  in  medioc- 
rity, this,  too,  was  in  the  order  of  evolution.  The 
feeble  books  of  one  generation  are  often  horn-books 
for  the  people,  the  promise  and  cause  of  better  work 
in  the  next.  The  late  Civil  War  was  not  of  itself  an 
incentive  to  good  poetry  and  art,  nor  directly  pro- 
ductive of  them.  Such  disorders  seldom  are;  action 
is  a  substitute  for  the  ideal,  and  the  thinker's  or 
dreamer's  life  seems  ignoble  and  repugnant.  But  we 
shall  see  that  the  moral  and  emotional  conflicts  pre- 
ceding the  war,  and  leading  to  it,  were  largely  stim- 
ulating to  poetic  ardor;  they  broke  into  expression, 
and  buoyed  with  earnest  and  fervid  sentiment  our 
heroic  verse.  Lastly,  it  must  be  observed  that,  about 
the  time  from  which  I  date  the  appearance  of  a  group 
of  noteworthy  poets,  a  material  support  was  afforded 
to  ideal  work.  Both  artists  and  writers  began  to  be 
paid,  and  found  their  respective  gifts  to  some  extent 
a  means  of  subsistence.  American  publishers,  as  I 
have  said,  took  heart,  and  made  ventures  in  behalf 
of  our  own  literature.  Journalism  also  lent  its  aid, 
paying  critical  attention  to  native  authors,  and  en- 
abling not  a  few  of  them  to  gain  a  foothold  by  labor 
upon  the  great  newspapers  and  magazines.  All  these 
aids,  I  repeat,  came  into  service  after  the   scientific 


Growth  of 
the  mar' 
ket. 


30 


EARLY  AND  RECENT  CONDITIONS. 


Advent  of 
a  true  po- 
etic school. 


restraint  of  the  modern  period  began  to  have  weight. 
They  assisted  us  to  bear  up  against  it,  and  alleviated 
the  special  restrictions  of  an  earlier  time.  The  sweet 
and  various  measures  of  a  band  of  genuine  singers 
at  length  were  heard,  and  found  an  audience  in  what- 
soever regions  know  the  English  tongue.  American 
poetry  took  its  place  in  literature,  and  entered  upon 
a  first  term,  now  brought  to  an  end,  and  constitut- 
ing the  main  field  of  this  review. 


CHAPTER    II 


GROWTH   OF  THE  AMERICAN   SCHOOL. 


HAVING  given  an  outline  of  the  situation  which 
rendered  the  new  country,  in  the  earlier  pe- 
riods of  settlement,  an  untoward  region  for  the  pur- 
suit of  song,  and  also  of  the  specific  aids  which  at 
last  have  enabled  America  to  have  some  voice  and 
inspiration  of  her  own,  I  now  wish  to  glance  at  the 
actual  record  of  her  lyrical  exploits  that  culminated 
with  the  rise  of  the  group  of  poets  to  whom  this  work 
is  chiefly  devoted.  To  do  this  minutely  would  re- 
quire us  to  travel  over  dreary  wastes  indeed,  though 
gaining  rest  at  last  upon  the  borders  of  a  land  of 
promise.  From  what  has  been  written,  I  shall  rightly 
be  understood  to  agree  with  Mr.  Whipple  in  his  state- 
ment that  the  course  of  our  literature  has  been,  upon 
the  whole,  subsidiary  to  the  general  movement  of  the 
American  mind  ;  that  our  imagination  has  found  ex- 
ercise in  the  subjugation  of  a  continent,  in  establish- 
ing liberty,  in  war,  politics,  and  government,  —  above 
all,  in  the  inventive  and  constructive  energy  and  the 
financial  boldness  needed  to  develop  and  control  the 
material  heritage  which  has  fallen  to  us.  But  to  this 
let  me  add  that  the  course  of  our  poetry,  for  the  same 
reasons,  was  long  subsidiary  to  the  course  of  other 
literature,  —  at  once,  or  by  turns,  to  our  theological, 
political,  and  educational   achievements  in  prose,  and 


A  retro- 
spective 
summary: 
1607-1860. 


"The  First 
Century  of 
the  Repub- 
lic "  : 
Harper's 
Mag~>  1876. 


32 


GROWTH  OF  THE  AMERICAN  SCHOOL. 


Authori- 
ties. 


Prof. 

Moses  Coit 
Tyler's  re- 
view of  the 
Colo?iial 
periods. 


to  those  in  the  departments  of  historical  narrative  and 
romance. 

The  means  for  a  survey  of  the  early  waste,  and  of 
its  few  and  unimportant  oases,  are  to  be  found  in  the 
libraries  of  collectors,  and  in  the  compilations  of  the 
Duyckincks,  Griswold,  and  others,  who  have  made 
for  us  as  cheery  a  showing  as  they  could.  But  a 
reader  who  has  not  access  to  the  rare  books  of  a 
succession  of  by-gone  authors  gains  with  more  satis- 
faction a  correct  idea  of  their  worth  and  purport  by 
the  study  of  such  a  work  as  Professor  Tyler's  "  His- 
tory of  American  Literature."  He  well  may  avail 
himself,  so  far  as  it  is  completed,  of  a  critical  digest 
whose  facts  will  not  be  gainsaid,  a  clear  and  whole- 
some exposition  of  our  early  literature,  presenting  judg- 
ments and  inferences  with  which  he  usually  must  be 
in  accord.  It  is  a  result  of  scholarly  labor,  closely 
examining  the  field,  and  failing  not  to  detect  what- 
ever may  be  found  of  value  in  those  new  planta- 
tions. Can  this  mould  of  the  Colonial  period  be 
touched  with  the  sunlight  of  to-day?  Can  these  dry 
bones  live?  Yes,  under  the  hands  of  a  man  with 
the  patience,  enthusiasm,  and  kindly  humor  of  their 
historian,  to  whom  American  literature  is  so  indebted 
for  this  review  of  its  progress  that  his  name  will  be 
enviably  connected  with  it  henceforth. 

And  in  the  two  large  volumes,  covering  our  first 
and  second  periods,  more  than  a  century  and  a  half, 
—  from  1607  to  1765,  —  the  product  of  the  poets  ap- 
pears so  valueless  and  meagre  that,  if  the  narrative 
depended  on  them  alone,  there  would  be  no  great  rea- 
son for  its  compilation.  A  larger  proportion  of  edu- 
cated men  belonged  to  the  early  colonies  than  is  to  be 
found  elsewhere  upon  the  rolls  of  emigration.  Nearly 
all   writers   then   wrote   verse,    at   first  printing   their 


PURITAN  RHYMESTERS. 


33 


works  in  London,  and  afterward  by  means  of  the  few 
and  meanly  furnished  presses  along  this  coast.  These 
folk  were  simply  third-rate  British  rhymesters,  who 
copied  the  pedantry  of  the  tamest  period  known. 
The  only  marks  of  distinction  between  their  prose 
and  verse  were  that,  while  the  former  might  be  dull, 
the  latter  must  be,  and  must  pay  a  stilted  regard  to 
measure  and  rhyme.  How  hard  for  our  amiable  his- 
torian to  make  poetical  finds  that  can  lighten  the 
pages  of  his  record  !  How  he  seizes  upon  some 
promising  estray,  —  like  the  anonymous  ode  on  the 
death  of  picturesque  Nat.  Bacon,  like  Norton's  "Fu- 
neral Elegy  "  upon  Mistress  Anne  Bradstreet,  or  Urian 
Oakes's  upon  Thomas  Shepard,  —  and  makes  the  most 
of  it !  Surely  a  time  that  fed  its  imagination  with  the 
offerings  of  the  "  Tenth  Muse,"  and  expressed  relig- 
ious exaltation  in  those  measures  of  the  Bay  Psalm 
Book  that  seem  to  break  from  a  cow's  horn  or  a 
Roundhead's  nose,  and  in  the  lyrical  damnations  of 
Michael  Wigglesworth,  —  such  a  time,  from  its  begin- 
ning with  George  Sandys  even  to  the  generation  that 
founded  hopes  of  a  native  drama  upon  the  genius  of 
Thomas  Godfrey,  had  derived  few  creative  impulses 
from  its  own  experience,  and  could  give  no  real  inti- 
mation of  a  national  future.  This  was  a  time  which 
now  seems  more  venerable  to  us  than  the  daylight 
eras  of  ancient  civilization,  —  drearily  old-fashioned, 
like  its  town  halls  and  college  barracks,  still  remain- 
ing, all  the  older  and  mouldier  because  they  are  not 
antique.  To  its  very  close,  when  the  different  colo- 
nies began  to  move  toward  cohesion,  the  most  of  it 
seems  to  me  night,  —  utter  night.  Its  poetical  relics 
are  but  the  curios  of  a  museum,  —  the  queer  and  ugly 
specimens  of  an  unhistoric  age. 

Manifestly,  and  as   at  a   later  time,  New  England 
3 


Ode  on  the 
Death  of 
Nathaniel 
Bacon  : 
1676. 

John  Nor- 
ton: 1651- 
1716. 

Urian 
Oakes: 
1631-81. 

Anne 
Brad- 
street  : 
1612-72. 

The  "Bay 
Psalm 
Book": 
Cam- 
bridge, 
1640. 

Michael 
Wiggles- 
worth  : 
1631-1705. 

Sandys, 
the  trans- 
lator of 
Ovid: 
1577-1644. 

Thomas 
Godfrey : 
1736-63. 

A  rayless 
period. 


New  Eng- 


34 


GROWTH  OF  THE  AMERICAN' SCHOOL. 


land  in  the 
van. 


The  Early 
Chroni- 
clers. 


Histori- 
ans. 


Divines. 


The  Mid- 


claimed  the  lead  in  whatsoever  there  was  of  thought, 
or  wit,  or  fancy ;  and  Cambridge  even  then  had  her 
poets,  who  accounted  themselves  true  children  of  Par- 
nassus. Tyler  plainly  shows  how  the  feudal  policy 
of  dispersion,  and  a  contempt  for  book-learning  as 
compared  with  active  life,  placed  a  ban  upon  letters 
in  Virginia ;  while  the  New  England  policy  of  numer- 
ical and  intellectual  concentration  brought  forward 
the  learned  men  of  that  region,  and  made  its  colo- 
nists a  literary  people  from  the  first.  In  spite  of  their 
moroseness,  pedantry,  asceticism,  a  lurking  perception 
of  beauty,  an  aesthetic  sensibility,  was  to  be  found 
among  them.  But  the  manifest,  the  sincere  genius  of 
the  colonies  is  diplayed  elsewhere  than  in  their  labo- 
rious verse.  Noble  English  and  a  simple,  heroic 
wonder  give  zest  to  the  writings  of  the  early  chron- 
iclers, the  annals  of  discovery  and  adventure.  Such 
traits  distinguish  the  narratives  of  the  gallant  and 
poetic  Captain  John  Smith,  and  of  Strachey,  whose 
picture  of  a  storm  and  wreck  in  the  Bermudas  so 
roused  the  spirit  that  conceived  "  The  Tempest." 
They  pervade  the  memorials  of  Bradford  and  Win- 
throp,  of  Johnson  and  Gookin,  of  Francis  Higginson 
and  Winslow  and  William  Wood.  There  are  power 
and  imagination  in  the  discourses  of  the  great  preach- 
ers,—  Hooker,  Cotton,  Roger  Williams,  Oakes, — who 
founded  a  dominion  of  the  pulpit  that  was  not  shaken 
until  after  the  time  of  Edwards  and  Byles.  Verse- 
making  was  but  the  foible  of  the  colonial  New  Eng- 
enders ;  law,  religious  fervor,  superstition,  were  then 
the  strength  of  life;  and  the  time  that  produced  In- 
crease and  Cotton  Mather  fostered  a  progeny  quite 
as  striking  and  characteristic  as  the  melodists  of  our 
late  Arcadian  morn. 

When  the  Middle  Colonies  began  to  have  a  litera- 


REVOLUTIONARY  PERIOD. 


35 


ture,  it  was  natural   that  the   chief  writers  —  men  of 
the  learned  professions,  busied  in  affairs,  and  already 
feeling   that   instinct   of  government   which    animates 
territorial  centres  —  should  be  publicists,  setting  forth 
the  principles  of  order,  economy,  and  social  weal.     The 
colonial  separation  ended ;  the  national  movement  be- 
gan with  stormy  agitation,  and  progressed  to  union  in 
council  and  war.     With  the  Revolution  came  not  only 
the  great  orators,  but  an  outburst,  otherwise  than  tune- 
ful, of  patriotic  ballads,  songs,  and  doggerel  satires,  — 
to  all  of  which,  at   this  distance,  the  sounds  of  the 
Continental  fife  and  drum  seem  a  fitting  accompani- 
ment.    Nor  did  staid  and  learned  personages  disdain 
to  pay  homage  to   the  precept   of   Andrew  Fletcher, 
and  to  supplement  the  new-born  national  ardor  by  the 
aid  of  their  muses.     Trumbull's  M'Fingal  is  a  work 
that  will  not  go  quite  out  of  repute.     It  still  speaks 
well  for  the  character,  wit,  and  facility  of  the  staunch 
and  acute   author,  and  shows   genuine   originality  al- 
though written  after  a  model.     Not  even  "  Hudibras  " 
more  aptly  seizes  upon  the  ludicrous  phases  of  a  tur- 
bulent epoch.     In  New  York,  bluff  Captain  Freneau, 
mariner,  journalist,  and  poet,  proved  himself  the  ready 
laureate  of  the  war.     Read  the  story  of  his  impetuous 
life,  and  look  through  the  collection  of  his  ditties  and 
poems,  with  their  pretentious  defects  and  unwittingly 
clever  touches.     A  strange  and  serio-comic  medley  they 
are,  and  no  less  a  varied  representation  of  the  poetic 
standards  reached  in  America  a  hundred  years   ago. 
Among   the  relics  which   I   call   to  mind  of   the   jin- 
gling verse  produced  in  quantity  by  Treat  Paine  and 
his    contemporaries,    there    is    scarcely   a    lyric    that 
breathes  what  we  now  recognize  as  the  essential  po- 
etic  spirit,    excepting  five   or  six   of   Freneau's,  such 
as  "The  Wild  Honeysuckle,"  "The  Parting  Glass," 


die  Colo- 
nies. 


Revolu- 
tionary 
Period: 
1765-87. 


John 

Trumbull: 

1750-1831. 


Philip 
Freneau : 
1752-1832. 


Rhyme- 
sters 0/  his 
time. 


36 


GROWTH  OF  THE  AMERICAN  SCHOOL. 


Royall 
Tyler : 
1757-1826. 

William 
Dunlap  : 
1766-1839. 

1787-1815. 


Timothy 
Dwight : 
1752-1817. 

Joel  Bar- 
low: 1755- 
1812. 

Patriotic 
ditties. 


A  natural 
course  of 
develop- 
ment. 


"To  a  Honey  Bee"  (which  last  is  good  enough  to 
be  Landor's),  and  a  delicate  little  song,  by  John  Shaw, 
of  Maryland,  entitled  "Who  has  Robbed  the  Ocean 
Cave  ?  "  Practical  efforts,  however,  were  made  in  the 
composition  and  production  of  native  dramas,  by  Ty- 
ler and  Dunlap,  —  our  earliest  playwrights,  —  in  Bos- 
ton and  New  York  respectively. 

After  the  close  of  the  Revolution,  and  until  the 
War  of  18 1 2,  the  genius  of  our  people  was  devoted  to 
the  establishment,  through  peaceful  labor,  of  the  secu- 
rity and  resources  which  should  be  the  first-fruits  of 
a  conflict  for  independence.  Writers  occupied  them- 
selves with  analyzing  the  science  of  government,  its 
principles  and  practice.  No  American  library,  how- 
ever, was  complete  without  copies  of  Dr.  Dwight's  his- 
torico-didactic  masterpiece,  Greenfield  Hill,  and  Joel 
Barlow's  quarto  epic,  The  Columbiad.  The  popular 
ear  was  content  with  patriotic  songs,  among  them 
"  Hail  Columbia,"  which  owed  their  general  adoption, 
like  a  successor,  "  The  Star-Spangled  Banner,"  to  the 
music  that  carried  them  and  to  an  early  possession 
of  the  field.  It  was  not  until  peace,  for  a  second 
time,  became  a  habit  that  the  imagination  of  a  young 
people,  assured  of  nationality,  slowly  found  expres- 
sion upon  the  written  page.  In  view  of  the  condi- 
tions already  described,  what  traits  might  we  reason- 
ably expect  would  characterize  poetic  effort  at  this 
stage  of  development? 

First,  —  and  although  the  form  and  ideal  of  Amer- 
ican verse  still  should  correspond,  like  all  our  early 
fashions,  to  the  modes  prevailing  in  England,  —  it 
would  seem  that,  gradually,  poets  should  appear,  ham- 
pered by  this  instinct  of  correspondence,  and  not  quite 
knowing  or  daring  to  be  original,  yet  possessing  graces 
and  thoughts  of  their  own,  and  looking  at  things,  after 


PIERPONT.  —  DANA.—ALLSTON. 


37 


all,  in  a  different  way  from  the  English;  that  they 
should  seek  for  home  themes,  and  study  their  sur- 
roundings, most  likely  in  a  doubtful  and  groping  man- 
ner j  that  a  diversity  of  subject,  thought,  and  language 
should  be  observed  in  the  distinct  sections  of  the  re- 
public, —  the  poets  of  the  South  being  more  courtly 
and  romantic,  and  those  of  the  Middle  States  more 
national  and  more  upon  the  search  for  aboriginal  and 
historical  flavor ;  that  local  successes  should  be  marked 
where  there  was  the  least  inflow  of  new  foreign  ele- 
ments, the  sincerest  faith,  the  most  intelligent  thought ; 
that  poetry  should  be  the  more  learned,  the  more  sub- 
tle and  earnest,  in  the  scholarly  region  of  the  East, 
and  that  poets*  should  thrive  best  there,  where  the 
practice  of  literature  had  long  obtained,  —  since  all 
forms  of  art  require  more  time  for  growth  than  other 
products  of  national  organization. 

Somewhat  after  this  wise,  in  fact,  as  we  recur  to 
the  earliest  promise  of  an  American  school,  we  find 
that  it  began  with  the  second  quarter  of  this  century. 
Imaginative  youths,  born  and  educated  in  the  new 
republic,  discovered  that  they  were  poets,  and  strove 
to  express  the  spirit  of  their  birth  and  training. 
Among  them,  Pierpont,  Dana,  Allston,  Sprague,  Bry- 
ant,—  the  gentle  stars  of  the  East,  —  began  to  show 
their  light,  and  offered  their  tender  or  patriotic  lyrics, 
their  meditative  verse,  their  placid  monographs  on  the 
phases  of  American  scenery  and  tradition.  Of  these, 
Bryant  was  the  one  whose  genius  had  the  elements 
that  give  permanence  to  the  work  of  poets.  In  the 
South,  a  few  scattered  minstrels,  such  as  Wilde  and 
Pinkney,  sang  their  Lovelace  lyrics.  Their  type  has 
survived,  almost  to  our  day.  Throughout  the  swift 
development  of  the  Northern  States,  the  South  —  agri- 
cultural, feudal,  provincial  —  loyally  clung  to  its  eight- 


Differenti' 
ation. 


Earliest 
promise  of 
a  Home- 
School, 
1815- 

John  Pier' 
font : 
1785-1866. 

Richard 
Henry 
Dana : 
1787-1879. 

Washing- 
ton All- 
ston :  1779- 
1843. 

Charles 
Sprague : 
1791-1875. 

Bryant. 

Richard 
Henry 
Wilde : 
17S9-1847. 

Edward 
Coate 
Pinkney : 
1802-28. 


38 


GROWTH  OF  THE  AMERICAN  SCHOOL. 


The  South. 


William 
Gilmore 
Simms : 
1806-70. 


Philip 
Pendleton 
Cooke  : 
1816-50. 


Poe. 


James 
A  braham 
Hillhouse : 
1789-1841. 

John  Gar- 
diner Cal- 
kins 

Brainard: 
1796-1828. 

James 
Gates 
Percival: 
1795-1856. 

Allow- 
ances to  be 
made. 


eenth-century  taste,  making  no  intellectual  changes 
so  long  as  human  slavery  was  the  basis  of  its  physical 
life.  I  shall  hereafter  refer  to  the  quality  of  the  new- 
born Southern  imagination.  That  it  exists,  in  fresh 
and  hopeful  promise,  is  now  beyond  doubt.  A  few  of 
the  earlier  Southern  writers  —  one  of  whom  was  Simms, 
the  novelist-poet  —  worked  courageously,  but  with  more 
will  and  fluency  than  native  power ;  so  that,  in  spite 
of  their  abundant  verse,  such  a  lyrist  as  Pendleton 
Cooke  was  long  the  typical  Southern  poet,  —  a  name 
joined  with  the  memory  of  a  single  song.  A  collec- 
tion of  the  earlier  Southern  poetry  worth  keeping  would 
be  a  brief  anthology,  which  a  little  volume  might  con- 
tain, and  in  which  more  than  one  ofr  Albert  Pike's 
productions  certainly  should  be  found.  Poe,  whose 
pieces  would  occupy  one  third  of  it,  sought  the  literary 
market,  deserting  Richmond  and  Baltimore  for  Phila- 
delphia and  New  York.  He  lived  in  the  Northern 
atmosphere,  and,  like  Bryant,  took  his  part  in  the  busy 
movement  of  its  civic  life  and  work. 

Besides  the  Eastern  poets  whom  I  have  named, 
there  were  others  who  still  more  closely  followed 
English  models  :  among  them,  the  orthodox  bards  of 
Connecticut,  Hillhouse  and  Brainard,  compared  with 
whom  Percival,  the  eccentric  scholar  and  recluse, 
shines  by  virtue  of  a  gift  improved  by  no  mean  cul- 
ture. His  lyrics  and  poems  of  nature,  though  infe- 
rior to  Bryant's,  so  resemble  them  that  he  would  be 
called  the  latter's  pupil,  had  not  the  two  composed 
in  the  same  manner  from  the  outset. 

These  writers  and  some  others  of  their  time  must, 
in  all  fairness,  be  judged  by  it.  They  had  their  mod- 
est laurels  and  rewards,  and  were  the  bright  selected 
few  of  their  country  and  period,  —  no  less  distin- 
guished, though  within  a  smaller  horizon,  than  their 


HA  LLECK.  —  DRA  KE. 


39 


latter-day  successors.  Their  work  was  the  best  of  its 
kind  which  America  could  show;  it  had  the  knack 
of  making  itself  read  in  the  annuals  and  school-books, 
and  influenced  the  sentiment  of  more  than  one  gen- 
eration. Were  Dana  and  Allston  flourishing  now, 
they  would  accomplish  feats  then  impracticable,  and 
doubtless  would  be  at  no  disadvantage  among  our 
present  favorites,  nor  less  receive  our  honor  and  sup- 
port. Fashion  is  a  potency  in  art,  making  it  hard  to 
judge  between  the  temporary  and  the  lasting.  Are 
we  sure  that  our  popular  poets  are  better  in  native 
faculty  ?  If  they  have  a  finer  understanding  and  a 
defter  handling  of  their  craft,  these  may  be  partly  a 
consequence  of  the  fact  that  not  Montgomery  and 
Wilson,  but  Keats,  and  Wordsworth,  and  Tennyson, 
and  their  greater  masters,  have  supplied  the  models 
of  a  recent  school. 

It  was  natural,  also,  that  the  literary  centre  should 
shift  from  place  to  place,  along  a  sea-board  whose 
capital  was  scarcely  yet  defined.  New  York  early 
drew  together  a  number  of  bright  young  wits  and 
songsters.  The  fame  of  the  prose-romancers,  Cooper 
and  Irving,  and  their  success  with  home  themes,  were 
gratifying  to  the  local  and  national  pride,  and  en- 
couraged at  the  time,  as  far  as  literature  was  con- 
cerned, a  broader  American  sentiment  than  prevailed 
in  New  England.  That  was  a  spirited  little  group  of 
rhyming  satirists  whose  fancy  brightened  the  pages 
of  Coleman's  "Evening  Post."  Two  young  writers, 
Halleck  and  Drake,  worked  in  comradeship  until  the 
one  sustained  a  more  than  common  misfortune  in  the 
other's  untimely  death.  These  two  men  were  real 
poets;  such  is  the  impression  left  as  one  reads,  after 
many  years,  the  verse  composed  by  them.  Had  they 
been  born  half  a  century  later,  they  now  would  work 


New  York. 


Cooper  and 
Irving. 


"■The 

Croakers? 

1819-25. 


4Q 


GROWTH  OF  THE  AMERICAN  SCHOOL. 


Pioneers. 


John 
Howard 
Payne : 
1791-1852. 


Joseph 
Rodman 
Drake  : 
1795-1820. 


Fitz- 
Greene 
HaUeck '. 
1 790 -1 867. 


more  elaborately,  but  with  less  certainty  of  reputa- 
tion. Their  best  pieces  were  at  once  so  received 
into  popular  affection  that  the  authors'  names  still 
last.  Both  of  these  poets  had  humor,  and  a  percep- 
tion of  its  legitimate  use.  They,  with  Bryant  and  his 
school,  —  with  Brockden  Brown,  Paulding,  Cooper,  Ir- 
ving, and  Miss  Sedgwick,  writers  of  prose,  and  the 
dramatist  Payne,  author  of  "  Brutus  "  and  other  by- 
gone plays,  and  of  that  abiding  carol,  "  Home,  Sweet 
Home,"  —  were  the  first  Americans  whose  work  gave 
any  substantial  evidence  of  a  native  movement  in 
ideal  or  creative  literature.  Drake  died  in  his  twenty- 
sixth  year,  leaving  a  daughter,  through  whom  his 
poetic  gift  has  been  transmitted  to  our  day.  He  had 
a  quick,  genuine  faculty,  and  could  be  frolicsome  or 
earnest  at  will.  As  an  exercise  of  that  delicate  imag- 
ination which  we  term  fancy,  The  Culprit  Fay,  although 
the  work  of  a  youth  schooled  in  fairy-lore  and  the 
metres  of  Coleridge,  Scott,  and  Moore,  boded  well  for 
his  future.  "  The  American  Flag  "  is  a  stirring  bit  of 
eloquence  in  rhyme.  The  death  of  this  spirited  and 
promising  writer  was  justly  deplored.  His  talent  was 
healthy ;  had  he  lived,  American  authorship  might  not 
so  readily  have  become,  in  Griswold's  time,  a  vent  for 
every  kind  of  romantic  and  sentimental  absurdity. 
Drake  also  would  have  stimulated  the  muse  of  Hal- 
leck,  whose  choicest  pieces  were  composed  before  he 
had  outlived  the  sense  of  that  recent  companionship. 
He,  too,  was  a  natural  lyrist,  whose  pathos  and  elo- 
quence were  inborn,  and  whose  sentiment,  though  he 
wrote  in  the  prevailing  English  mode,  was  that  of  his 
own  land.  As  we  read  those  favorites  of  our  school- 
boy days,  "  Burns  "  and  "  Red  Jacket  "  and  "  Marco 
Bozzaris,"  we  feel  that  HaUeck  was,  within  his  bounds, 
a  national  poet.     Circumstances   dulled   his  fire,  and 


INCREASED  ACTIVITY. 


41 


he  lived  to  write  drivel  in  his  old  age.  But  the  early 
lyrics  remain,  nor  was  there  anything  of  their  kind  in 
our  home-poetry  to  compete  with  them  until  long  after 
their  first  production. 

The  impulse  given  to  poetry  and  belles-lettres  by 
the  example  of  the  early  poets  and  novelists  increased 
with  the  appearance  of  fresh  strivers  after  literary 
fame.  In  the  East,  names  began  to  be  mentioned 
that  now  are  great  indeed  ;  others,  then  more  com- 
monly known,  have  passed  almost  out  of  memory. 
A  few  teachers  of  sound  literary  doctrine,  like  E.  T. 
Charming,  of  Cambridge,  were  sowing  good  seed  for 
future  harvests.  In  New  York,  the  writings  of  Willis 
and  Tuckerman,  of  the  song-makers  Hoffman,  Mor- 
ris, and  English,  of  Verplanck,  the  Duyckincks,  Benja- 
min, Griswold,  and  other  editors  and  bookwrights,  and 
the  parade  of  new  versifiers,  male  and  female,  betok- 
ened a  taste,  however  crude  and  ill-regulated,  for  the 
pursuit  of  letters.  Occasionally  a  note  of  promise  was 
heard,  from  some  quaint  genius  like  Ralph  Hoyt,  or 
some  aspirant  like  Lord,  of  whom  great  things  were 
predicted,  and  who,  in  spite  of  Poe's  vindictive  on- 
slaught, was  and  is  a  poet.  A  good  deal  of  eloquent 
and  high-sounding  verse  was  produced  by  such  writers 
as  Ross  Wallace  and  Albert  Pike.  In  the  East,  John 
Neal,  William  Ware,  Lunt,  Hillard,  Mrs.  Child,  — 
and  in  regions  farther  south,  Conrad,  Kennedy,  and 
Simms,  —  were  active  at  this  time.  There  were  others 
whose  claim  to  attention  will  be  frequent  throughout 
this  work.  But  to  enumerate  all  who,  in  the  second 
quarter  of  this  century,  held  themselves  of  much  ac- 
count is  quite  beyond  my  need  and  intention.  Of 
the  New  York  group,  Willis  perhaps  had  the  most 
adroit  and  graceful  talent,  but  it  was  not  always  exer- 
cised as  by  one  possessing  convictions.     His  kindness, 


Growing 

literary 

activity. 

Henry 
Theodore 
Tucker- 
man: 
1813-71. 

Charles 
Fenno 

Hoffman : 
1806-84. 

George 
Pope  Mor- 
ris :  1802- 
64. 

Thomas 
Dunn 
English : 
1819- 

Park  Ben- 
jamin : 
1809-64. 

Ralph 
Hoyt: 
1810-78. 

William 
Wilber- 
force 
Lord: 
1819- 

William 
Ross  Wal- 
lace: 1819- 
81. 

Albert 

Pike: 

1809- 

Jokn 

Neal: 

1793-1876. 

George 
Lunt : 
1803-85. 

Robert 
Taylor 
Conrad : 
1810-58. 


42 


GROWTH  OF  THE  AMERICAN  SCHOOL. 


Nathaniel 
Parker 
Willis : 
1806-67. 


"  The  Lit- 
erati:" 


Pseudo- 
A  merican- 
ism. 


tact,  and  experience  of  the  world  made  him  an  arbi- 
ter in  a  provincial  time.  They  also  seriously  exposed 
him  to  the  three  worldly  perils  of  which,  no  less  than 
in  the  days  of  the  Apostle  John,  the  children  of  the 
Lord  must  have  a  care.  A  few  of  his  lyrics  are  charm- 
ingly tender  and  delicate,  but  he  never  did  himself 
full  justice  as  a  poet,  nor  realized  the  purpose  of  his 
ambitious  boyhood.  The  bustle  of  the  Literati,  as  Poe 
chose  to  call  them,  and  the  concentration  of  thriving 
journals  and  book-houses  in  Philadelphia  and  New 
York,  —  whither  most  roads  then  seemed  to  lead,  — 
made  for  a  while  the  scribbling  class  of  this  middle 
region  very  conspicuous  and  alert.  Their  kith  and 
kin,  scattered  throughout  the  States,  multiplied  in 
numbers.  The  first  green  fruit  of  a  school-system, 
under  which  boys  and  girls  had  models  set  before 
them,  and  were  incited  to  test  their  own  skill  in  com- 
position, fell  in  plenty  from  the  tree.  Each  county 
had  its  prodigy  contributing  to  the  annuals  and  maga- 
zines. Lowell's  "  mass-meeting "  of  poets  was  in  con- 
tinuous session,  —  made  up  of  those  who  wrote  verse, 
read  and  praised  it  one  to  another,  and  printed  it  for 
their  countrymen  to  read  and  praise.  The  dull  and 
authoritative  felt  the  responsibilities  of  the  situation. 
Never  was  a  more  united  effort  made,  with  malice  pre- 
pense, to  create  an  indigenous  school.  It  was  thought 
essential  that  purely  American  themes  and  incidents 
should  be  utilized.  Cockney  poets,  emulating  the 
method  of  Cooper,  sent  fancy  ranging  through  the 
aboriginal  forest,  and  wreaked  their  measures  upon 
the  supposititious  Indian  of  that  day.  Powhatan  and 
Tecumseh  became  the  heroes  of  hot-pressed  cantos, 
now  extinct.  The  Spirit  of  Wakondah  was  invoked 
by  one  bard,  and  made  to  tower  above  the  Rocky 
Mountains,  more  awe-inspiring  than  Camoens's  Spirit 


PASTOR  ET  OVES. 


43 


of  the  Cape.  Each  poet,  moreover,  tried  his  hand  at 
every  form  of  work,  and  each  thought  it  specially  in- 
cumbent upon  himself  to  write  a  drama,  —  not  solely 
for  the  stage,  but  that  America  might  not  be  deficient 
in  the  most  complex  order  of  poetical  composition. 
Since  the  heyday  of  the  Delia  Cruscans  never  were 
so  many  neophytes  and  amateurs  suffered  to  bring 
their  work  before  the  public.  Women  took  part  in 
the  campaign,  and,  truth  to  say,  were  often  more 
spontaneous  and  natural  than  their  brother-writers. 
One  of  the  sex,  Mrs.  Sigourney,  long  had  been  sup- 
plying the  prose  and  verse  that  answered  to  the  sim- 
ple wants  of  a  primitive  constituency.  Another, 
"Maria  del  Occidente,"  gained  something  like  fame, 
and  even  beyond  the  seas.  She  was,  in  fact,  a  woman 
of  ardent  feeling,  instinctive  art,  and  undoubted  met- 
rical talent,  though  scarcely  meriting  the  praise  which 
Lamb  and  Southey  awarded  her,  or  the  extravagant 
eulogium  of  her  modern  editor.  There  was  no  lack  of 
rivals  to  her  success  among  the  American  pupils  of 
Mrs.  Hemans  and  Miss  Landon.  Such  caterers  to 
the  literary  market  were  found  not  only  upon  this  side 
of  the  Atlantic.  England  was  slowly  escaping  from 
her  own  sentimentalists ;  the  "  Annuals  "  and  "  Souve- 
nirs "  were  still  in  vogue,  and  the  fashions  of  the  two 
countries  were  less  divided  than  now.  Poe,  with  a 
critical  eye  made  somewhat  keen  by  practice,  saw  the 
ludicrous  side  of  all  this,  and  poured  out  vials  of 
wrath  upon  his  contemporaries,  though  with  no  just 
claim  to  impartiality.  Lowell,  from  a  classical  dis- 
tance, celebrated  their  follies  in  the  lines  beginning, 

"But  stay,  here  comes  Tityrus  Griswold,  and  leads  on 
The  flocks  whom  he  first  plucks  alive,  and  then  feeds  on ! n 

But  this  reminds  us  that  Poe,  Lowell,  Longfellow, 


Lydia 
Howard 
Huntley 
Sigour- 
ney: 1791- 
1865. 

Maria 
Gowen 
Brooks : 
1795-1845. 

The  Senti- 
mentalists. 


Curative 
applica- 
tions. 


44 


GROWTH  OF  THE  AMERICAN  SCHOOL. 


Survival 
of  the  fit- 
test. 


Experi- 
mental 
failures 
needful  to 
ultimate 


Genuine 
quality 
of  the  more 
recent 
school. 


and  Emerson  were  gaining  influence  at  that  very  time ; 
that  others  since  eminent  in  our  literature  were  gradu- 
ally distinguished  from  the  multitude;  that,  however 
absurd  and  depressing  the  condition  just  set  forth,  a 
superficial  literary  movement  may  be  better  than  no 
movement  at  all.  As  the  voyage  progressed,  it  really 
was  surprising  how  soon  the  dullards  and  pretenders 
went  below,  while  the  born  sailors  helped  the  vessel 
forward.  The  fit  survivors  of  a  brood  of  poets  and 
authors  soon  obtained  a  grateful  hearing,  and  a  few 
publishers  found  pleasure  and  profit  in  nursing  the 
works  of  these  home-writers.  A  number  of  poets  — 
men  of  individual  traits,  but  allied  in  sentiment  and 
taste,  and  belonging  to  the  same  generation  —  seemed 
to  arise  at  once,  and  gained  the  position  which  they 
have  steadfastly  held  to  the  present  day. 


II. 

All  this  preliminary  ferment,  then,  was  in  some 
way  needful.  The  experiments  of  many  who  thought 
themselves  called  enabled  the  few  who  were  chosen 
to  find  motives  and  occasions  for  work  of  real  import. 
The  first  year  of  the  new  dispensation  was  worth  more 
in  its  product  than  the  score  of  years  preceding  it. 
The  poets  who  now  came  to  the  front  have  gained 
distinction  justly,  vying  with  those  of  other  coun- 
tries in  finish  and  thought,  and  in  that  reflection  of 
the  life  about  them  which  alone  could  make  them 
the  leaders  of  a  national  school.  At  the  recent  date 
when  the  formation  of  such  a  school  became  manifest, 
these  poets  spoke  truthfully  for  our  people  as  they 
were  and  had  been.  One  who  gives  their  verse  the 
fair  consideration  which  he  would  extend  to  that  of 
any  foreign  land  or  language  is  led  to  this  conclusion. 


POETRY  OF  NATURE. 


The  new  poetry  was  not  autochthonous  in  the  sense  of 
differing  from  all  previous  outgrowth  of  the  universal 
human  heart,  and  as  at  variance  with  forms  that  have 
long  seemed  natural  to  our  mother-tongue,  but  rather 
in  unaffected  presentation  of  the  feeling  and  ideas  of 
its  constituency,  and  after  this  wise  was  as  national, 
fresh,  and  aspiring  as  America  herself.  If  this  land 
has  not  yet  grown  to  full  voice,  it  has  not  lacked  a 
characteristic  expression  in  the  verse  of  our  favorite 
poets.  Their  careers,  we  have  seen,  began  almost  si- 
multaneously at  the  close  of  the  second  fifth  of  this 
century,  and  have  been  prolonged  until  now,  through 
a  period  of  nearly  fifty  years.  Let  me  again  briefly 
refer  to  the  elements  which  our  literature  hitherto 
might  justly  be  called  upon  to  idealize,  and  make 
some  mention  of  the  leading  poets  whose  song  has 
been  the  response  to  such  a  call. 

III. 

I  have  said  that  a  fellowship  with  the  spirit  of 
natural  Landscape,  and  the  recognition  of  its  beauty 
and  majesty,  were  the  earliest,  as  they  are  the  most 
constant,  traits  of  American  verse.  The  contemplation 
of  nature  has  not  often  been  the  first  step,  or  the 
second,  in  the  progress  of  ideality.  But  this  remark 
applies  to  primitive  races.  The  aborigines  of  a  coun- 
try are  almost  a  part  of  its  mould,  —  or,  at  least,  so 
closely  related  to  its  dumb  fauna  that  they  reflect  but 
little  on  the  mountains,  woods,  and  waters  which  ap- 
pear to  surround  them  as  a  matter  of  course.  Heroic 
or  savage  deeds  of  prowess  are  their  first  incitements 
to  poetic  utterance.  Even  an  extended  period  of  cul- 
ture and  growth  has  not  always  led  them  to  consider 
the   landscape  objectively.     Of  this  the  Greeks,  with 


K. 


Traits  of 
A  merican 
verse. 


i.   Truth- 
ful reflec- 
tion of  Na- 
ture. 


46 


GROWTH  OF  THE  AMERICAN  SCHOOL. 


The  usual 
order  re- 
versed. 


Our  first 
distinctive 
group  of 
painters. 


their  curious  disregard  of  natural  scenery,  are  a  fa- 
miliar example.  They  observed  nature  only  to  inform 
it  with  their  own  life,  until  there  was  no  river  or  tree 
without  its  genius.  First,  epic  action  ;  next,  patriotism 
and  devotion  ;  afterward,  dramatic  passion  ;  last  of  all, 
analysis  and  reflective  art.  In  our  own  settlements, 
a  race  that  already  had  gone  through  these  stages 
took  possession  of  a  new  world.  A  struggle  with  its 
conditions  involved  a  century  of  hardship  and  dis- 
trust. The  final  triumph,  the  adjustment  of  the  people 
to  their  locality,  brought  a  new  understanding,  out  of 
which  came  the  first  original  quality  in  our  poetry  and 
design.  Here  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  descriptive 
literature,  poetry  or  prose,  though  not  earlier  upon 
the  record  of  intellectual  development,  is  lower  as  re- 
spects the  essential  worth  of  Art  than  that  which  is 
emotional  or  dramatic.  In  the  full  prime  of  creative 
work,  the  one  must  serve  as  a  background  for  the 
other,  upon  which  attention  chiefly  is  concentrated. 
All  in  all,  it  was  a  foregone  conclusion  that  our  first 
independent  artists  should  betake  themselves  to  the 
study  and  utilization  of  American  scenery.  In  paint- 
ing, our  first  distinctive  school  —  for  such  I  do  not 
term  the  early  group  of  historical  and  portrait  painters, 
from  West  to  Allston  —  has  been  tfiat  of  the  land- 
scapists.  Let  us  own  that  when  either  poetry  or 
painting  deals  with  nature  in  no  copyist's  fashion,  but 
with  a  sense  of  something  "  deeply  interfused,"  it  may 
reach  the  higher  plane  of  art-expression.  To  this  end 
our  modern  painters,  upon  the  whole,  have  striven, 
from  the  time  of  Cole.  The  hands  of  Durand,  In- 
ness,  Kensett,  the  two  Giffords,  Whittredge,  McEntee, 
Church,  Bierstadt,  Brown,  Martin,  Wyant,  have  given 
us  a  landscape-school  that,  for  sincerity  and  freshness, 
is  notable  on  either  continent,  and  is  constantly  gain- 


BRYANT  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS. 


47 


ing  in  technique  and  variety  from  the  experiments  of 
younger  men.  The  literary  counterpart  of  this  school 
began  with  Bryant,  the  Druid  of  our  forests,  the  high- 
priest  of  Nature  in  her  elemental  types.  These  he 
has  celebrated  with  the  coolness  and  breadth  that 
were  traits  of  the  earlier  painters  named,  though  lack- 
ing the  freedom  and  detail  of  their  successors.  It  is 
dangerous  to  measure  one  art  by  another,  or  to  con- 
fuse their  terms ;  yet  we  feel  that  the  relationship 
between  the  pictures  of  Durand  and  Kensett,  for  ex- 
ample, and  the  meditative  verse  of  Bryant  —  from 
"  Thanatopsis "  and  "A  Forest  Hymn"  to  "The 
Night  Journey  of  a  River  "  —  is  near  and  suggestive. 
Bryant  was  at  the  head  of  our  reflective  poets,  find- 
ing his  bent  at  the  outset,  and  holding  it  to  the  very 
close.  His  work  rose  to  an  imaginative  height  which 
descriptive  poetry  of  itself  rarely  attains. 

He  was  followed  —  at  an  obvious  distance  —  by 
Percival,  Wilcox,  Street,  and  other  mild  celebrants  of 
nature,  who  failed  of  his  breadth  and  elevation.  Their 
patient  measures  show  how  strongly  the  scenery  of 
America  has  impressed  her  people.  To  the  present 
day,  the  landscape,  however  incidental  to  the  poetry 
of  Emerson,  Whittier,  Thoreau,  Lowell,  and  Taylor,  is 
constantly  there,  and  fresh  as  a  rocky  pasture-ground 
in  New  England  or  Pennsylvania  compared  with  a 
storied  park  of  Warwickshire.  In  the  work  of  Mrs. 
Thaxter,  Piatt,  and  other  recent  idyllists,  it  is  natural, 
sympathetic,  —  in  short,  thoroughly  American.  And 
for  me  the  value  of  the  poetry  of  Whitman  and  Joa- 
quin Miller  does  not  belong  to  the  method  and  dem- 
ocratic vistas  of  the  one,  and  the  melodramatic  ro- 
mance of  the  other ;  but  to  Whitman's  fresh,  absolute 
handling  of  outdoor  nature,  and  to  the  fine  surprises 
which  Miller  gives  us  in  haunting  pictures  of  the 
plains,  the  sierra,  and  the  sundown  seas. 


Their  com- 
peers  in 
Song. 


Bryant. 


Carlos 

Wilcox: 

1794-1827. 

Alfred 
Billings 
Street  : 
1811-81. 


Fresh  and 
original 
treatment 
of  land- 
scape. 


48 


GROWTH  OF  THE  AMERICAN  SCHOOL. 


2.  Presen- 
tation of 
the  nation- 
al senti- 
ment. 


Our  poets 
trtte  to 
their  own 
time  and 
kind. 

Bryant. 


Whittier. 


Pro  aris  et 

focis. 


Our  poetry  has  been  equally  fortunate  as  the  lan- 
guage of  the  ideas  and  human  emotions  to  which,  as 
a  people,  we  most  readily  incline.  Notwithstanding 
the  change  and  unrest  of  a  new  country,  the  milieu 
which  Taine  found  in  England  here  exists,  and  with 
fewer  qualifications.  Not  that  America  is  all  middle 
class,  as  some  have  asserted.  But  her  ideal  is  de- 
rived from  sentiments  which,  even  more  than  in  Great 
Britain,  preserve  a  Saxon  quality,  —  those  of  domes- 
ticity, piety,  freedom,  loyalty  to  the  institutions  of  the 
land.  If  unessential  to  various  dramatic  and  impas- 
sioned art-creations,  they  have  an  art  and  passion  of 
their  own,  and,  in  recognizing  this,  our  singers  are 
more  national  than  their  English  contemporaries.  The 
latter,  except  through  the  odes  and  idyls  of  Tennyson, 
have  conveyed  to  us  little  of  the  home-sentiment,  the 
English  faith  and  feeling,  which  brought  the  mother- 
land to  greatness.  Doubtless  it  is  because  these  qual- 
ities were  so  general  in  the  song  of  their  predecessors 
that  the  Victorian  choir  has  earnestly  concerned  itself 
with  mediaeval  and  legendary  work,  and  with  those 
technical  diversions  which  are  counted  as  art  for  art's 
sake. 

The  instinct  of  our  poets  has  led  them  first  to 
charge  their  lyrics  with  the  feeling  of  their  time  and 
people,  and  in  doing  this  they  have,  almost  without 
exception,  given  voice  to  their  own  heart.  Bryant's 
verse  is  an  illustration.  It  everywhere  breathes  of 
liberty  and  patriotism.  But  as  an  apostle  of  all  the 
sentiments  just  named,  —  taken  singly  or  in  combina- 
tion, —  Whittier,  the  Quaker  bard  of  Amesbury,  whose 
art  is  by  turns  so  homely  and  so  refined,  certainly  is 
preeminent,  and  in  a  sense  has  made  himself  that 
uncrowned  laureate,  the  people's  poet.  His  legend 
is  pro  aris  et  focis.     He  glows  with  faith,  strong  by 


NATIVE  SENTIMENT  AND  EMOTION 


49 


heredity  in  New  England,  and  thence  outflowing  to  the 
West,  nor  forgets  the  beauty  and  duty  of  temperance, 
charity,  and  virtue.  Nothing  restrains  his  democratic 
conception  of  the  freedom  of  the  soil,  the  nobility  of 
work,  the  right  to  labor  for  one's  self.  He  represents 
(to  borrow  Hugo's  formula)  our  conflict  with  oppres- 
sion, and  was  the  herald  and  inspired  seer  of  the 
enduring  fiery  conflict  that  preceded  the  antislavery 
war.  His  earnestness  and  burning  effort  contrast 
with  Bryant's  stern  repose.  In  various  national  qual- 
ities the  more  polished  work  of  Longfellow  and  Low- 
ell has  rivaled  Whittier's,  and  sustained  it.  They,  in 
their  ways,  and  Gallagher,  Holland,  Trowbridge,  and 
Taylor,  each  in  his  own,  have  paid  tribute  to  the 
charm  of  American  home-life,  and  have  repeated  the 
ancestral  and  prevalent  feeling  of  regions  which  they 
thoroughly  comprehend.  In  this  direction  they  have 
been  accompanied  by  many  writers  in  verse  or  prose, 
—  simple  balladists  like  the  Vermonter,  Eastman,  and 
tale-writers  with  the  insight  and  fidelity  that  belong 
to  Sylvester  Judd,  Mrs.  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe,  and 
Rose  Terry  Cooke.  In  times  of  concentrated  emo- 
tion, our  poets  of  all  degrees  have  broken  out  in 
vivid  strains.  Mrs.  Howe's  "  Battle  Hymn  "  is  mem- 
orable. There  is  native  fire  in  the  lyrics  of  McMas- 
ter,  Melville,  O'Hara,  Finch,  Palmer,  Randall,  For- 
ceythe  Willson,  and  that  brave,  free  singer,  Brownell, 
to  whom  Ticknor,  sounding  the  war-cry  of  the  South, 
bore  a  half-likeness  in  manner  and  spirit.  There  have 
been  many  single  voices,  heard  but  for  a  moment,  of 
this  class.  Nor  should  we  quite  forget  the  humbler 
song-makers  for  the  people,  such  as  Foster,  the  negro 
melodist,  —  and  Work,  to  whose  stirring  music  our 
soldiers  marched  with  a  will,  and  of  whose  songs  two 
or  three  at  least  should  preserve  the  name  of  their 
4 


Conflict 
with  op- 
pression. 

William 
Davis  Gal- 
lagher : 
1808- 

Josiah 
Gilbert 
Holland: 
1819-81. 

John 

Townsend 
Trow- 
bridge : 
1827- 

Charles 
Gamage 
Eastman '. 
18x6-61. 

Julia 
Ward 
Howe: 
1819- 

Herman 
Melville  : 
1819- 

Byron 
Forceythe 
Willson : 
1837-67. 

Henry 
Howard 
Brownell: 
1820-72. 

Fraticis 
Orrery 
Ticknor : 
1822-74. 

(See  In- 
dex.) 


50 


GROWTH  OF  THE  AMERICAN  SCHOOL. 


Religious 
Verse. 

A  rthur 
Cleveland 
Coxe : 
1818- 

(See  In- 
dex.) 


A  merican 

female 

Poets. 


The  early 
and  later 
sisterhoods 
of  song. 
{See  In- 
dex.) 


University 
group. 


composer.  In  closing  this  section  I  will  add  a  word 
in  regard  to  a  kind  of  verse  which,  of  all,  is  the  most 
common  and  indispensable,  —  that  devoted  to  rever- 
ence and  worship.  The  religious  verse  of  America, 
whether  the  work  of  poets  at  large,  or  of  those  whose 
range  is  chiefly  confined  to  it,  —  Muhlenberg,  Coxe, 
Doane,  Peabody,  Croswell,  Sears,  S.  Johnson,  S.  Long- 
fellow, Abraham  Coles,  Ray  Palmer,  Harriet  Kimball, 
Hedge,  Dr.  Frothingham,  Randolph,  Chadwick,  Sav- 
age, and  many  other  orthodox  or  liberal  composers,  — 
ranks  in  quality,  if  not  in  quantity,  with  the  hym- 
nology  of  other  lands. 

No  one  can  enter  upon  the  most  cursory  review  of 
our  literature  without  being  struck  by  the  share  which 
women  have  had  in  its  production.  A  sisterhood  of 
song,  expressing  its  own  delicate  and  heroic  nature, 
and  many  thoughts  and  affections  that  are  sweet  and 
high  and  impassioned,  has  won  in  America  a  just  and 
distinctive  regard.  The  female  voices  early  added 
softness,  and  at  times  strength,  to  the  general  song. 
The  names  of  Maria  Lowell,  Mrs.  Osgood,  Mrs.  Whit- 
man, the  Cary  sisters,  Mrs.  Judson,  Mrs.  Sewall,  Eliz- 
abeth Lloyd  Howell,  Mrs.  Oakes  Smith,  Mrs.  E.  C. 
Kinney,  and  Mrs.  Botta,  some  of  whom  have  passed 
away,  are  cherished  by  not  a  few.  They  have  had 
successors  —  of  whom  are  Mrs.  Cooke,  Mrs.  Stoddard, 
Mrs.  Allen,  Mrs.  Whitney,  Mrs.  Dorr,  Mrs.  Greenough, 
Lucy  Larcom,  Mrs.  Hudson,  and  others  to  whom  I 
shall  refer  in  a  later  chapter  —  some  of  whose  names 
are  veritably  household  words  throughout  the  country, 
and  much  of  whose  work,  in  verse  and  prose,  has 
taken  a  subtler  range,  a  better  finish,  a  definite  and 
influential  hold  upon   the  public  attention. 

American  culture,  if  not  so  exact  and  diligent  as 
that  of  more  learned  nations,  is  sympathetic,  and  ex- 


CAMBRIDGE.  —  CONCORD. 


5' 


plores  all  literatures  for  its  delight  and  betterment. 
It  is  most  advanced  in  the  sections  where  it  took  its 
start,  but  there  and  elsewhere  is  well  represented  in 
our  poetry.  A  university  school  has  sent  out  rays 
from  Cambridge,  the  focus  being  the  home  of  a  poet 
with  whose  rise  the  new  poetic  movement  fairly  began. 
He  grew  to  be  not  the  poet  of  a  section,  nor  even  of 
a  people,  but  one  rendered  into  many  languages,  and 
known  throughout  the  world.  Longfellow,  on  the 
score  of  his  fame,  and  his  almost  exclusive  devotion 
to  the  muse,  became  the  centre  of  a  group  distin- 
guished by  culture,  elegant  learning,  regard  for  the 
manner  of  saying  no  less  than  for  what  is  said.  His 
early  legend  rightly  was  Outre  Mer,  for  he  stimulated 
our  taste  by  choice  presentation  of  what  is  rare  abroad, 
until  it  grew  able  to  perceive  what  is  rare  and  choice 
at  home*  With  thoughts  of  this  singer  come  thoughts 
of  peace,  of  romance,  of  the  house  made  beautiful  by 
loving  hands.  Lowell  and  Holmes,  no  less  than 
Longfellow,  and  wonted  to  the  same  atmosphere,  rep- 
resent our  conflict  with  rudeness,  ignorance,  and  ascet- 
icism. They  laugh  the .  Philistine  to  scorn,  and  with 
their  wit  and  learning  advance  the  movement  toward 
sweetness  and  light.  Near  them  are  others,  such  as 
Parsons,  Story,  Robert  Lowell,  Mrs.  Fields,  who  may 
be  classed  more  readily  with  a  composite  group  of 
whom  I  have  yet  to  speak.  But  first  let  us  observe 
that  an  imaginative  and  unique  division  of  the  recent 
school  is  that  which  represents  the  liberal  philosophy 
of  New  England  and  its  conflict  with  ancestral  super- 
stition. The  mind  and  soul  of  Transcendentalism 
seemed  to  find  their  predestined  service  in  the  land 
of  the  Puritans.  The  poetry  which  sprang  from  it 
had  a  more  subtle  aroma  than  that  whose  didacticism 
infected   the   English  Lake  school.     The  latter  made 


Longfel- 
low. 


"Outre 
Mer." 


Conflict 
with  ascet' 


Robert 
Traill 
Spence 
Lowell 
1816- 

Transcen- 

dental 

groufi. 


Concord 
and  Grasr 
mere. 


52 


GROWTH  OF  THE  AMERICAN  SCHOOL. 


A  ndrews 
Norton : 
1786-1853. 

Emerson. 

Amos 
Bronson 
Alcott: 
1799- 

Henry 
David 
Thoreau  : 
1817-62. 

Sarah 
Margaret 
Fuller 
Ossoli : 
1810-50. 

Jones 
Very : 
1813-80. 

Christo- 
pher 
Pearse 
Cranch  : 
1813- 

William 
Ellery 
Channing: 
1818- 

David  A  t- 
tvood  JVas- 
son  :  1823- 

Thomas 
Went- 
tvorth 
Higgin- 
son:  1823- 

Franklin 
Benjamin 
Sanborn  : 
1831- 

Erastus 
IVolcott 
Ellsworth: 
1822- 

IVilliam 

Bull 

Wright: 


prosaic  the  verse  of  famous  poets ;  out  of  the  former 
the  quickest  inspiration  of  our  down-East  thinkers 
seemed  to  grow.  Their  philosophy,  beginning  with 
the  prose  and  verse  of  Andrews  Norton,  and  the  ex- 
alted spirituality  of  Dr.  Channing,  and  soon  going 
beyond  the  early  liberties,  has  attained  its  riper  ex- 
pression in  lyrical  work,  prophetic,  mystical,  or  quaintly 
wise.  It  borrowed,  in  truth,  the  wisdom  of  the  Orient 
and  the  speculations  of  Germany,  but  has  not  failed 
to  apply  the  vision  that  so  inspired  it  to  the  life  and 
action  of  the  New  World.  The  white  light  of  Emer- 
son, the  pure  and  elevated  master  of  the  Concord 
group,  has  been  a  steadfast  beacon  for  his  companions. 
Among  these,  Alcott,  Thoreau,  Margaret  Fuller,  Jones 
Very,  Cranch,  Ellery  Channing,  Wasson,  Higginson, 
and  Sanborn  may  be  reckoned,  with  due  allowance  for 
the  individuality  of  each.  Here  and  there  stray  sing- 
ers, like  the  shy  and  philosophic  minstrel,  Ellsworth, 
have  seemed  to  belong  to  this  peculiarly  American 
caste.  Another  such  was  the  lamented  Dr.  Wright, 
whose  gift  was  delicately  pure  and  thoughtful.  Poe 
was  right  in  claiming  that  the  speculative  tendency 
of  these  poets  was  at  odds  with  the  artistic  effect  of 
their  work,  but  ought  to  have  seen  that  a  more  ex- 
quisite feeling  and  insight,  allied  with  that  tendency, 
often  made  amends  for  it. 

Meantime,  as  I  was  about  to  point  out,  we  have 
had  a  number  of  poets,  including  most  of  those  who 
do  not  live  in  New  England,  who  have  clung  to  their 
art  from  sheer  love  of  the  beautiful,  under  varying 
chances  of  favor  and  discouragement.  They  have  paid 
slight  regard  to  their  respective  localities,  writing  after 
their  own  versatile  moods,  and  looking  wherever  they 
pleased  for  models  and  themes.  Some  have  followed 
other  than  literary  pursuits,  or,  if  earning  their  bread 


NEW   YORK  AND  HER  POETS. 


53 


by  the  pen,  have  accepted  the  vicissitudes  of  their  craft 
under  the  conditions  heretofore  mentioned.  Their 
tastes  and  habits  have  made  them  composite,  if  not 
cosmopolitan.  Their  work  is  not  provincial,  though 
often  less  original  than  that  of  some  whom  we  have 
named.  But  in  escaping  the  rigors  of  a  chosen  sec- 
tion, they  have  also  foregone  its  distinctions.  The 
East  has  loved  its  poets,  and,  what  is  more,  has  lis- 
tened to  them.  The  New  England  spirit  has  been  that 
of  Attica,  which  state,  we  are  told,  "  secure  in  her 
sterility,  boasted  that  her  land  had  never  been  inun- 
dated by  these  tides  of  immigration,"  and  that  "she 
traced  the  stream  of  her  population  in  a  backward 
course  through  many  generations."  With  respect  to 
philosophy  and  economics,  and  in  fields  of  taste  and 
literary  judgment,  the  trust  of  the  modern  Athens  is 
founded  on  her  own  usage  and  her  men  of  note.  It 
is  true  that  the  reverence  paid  our  elder  poets  is  now 
general  throughout  the  land,  and  as  sincere  and  beau- 
tiful as  that  which  the  bards  of  Germany  and  Scan- 
dinavia always  have  received  at  the  hands  of  their 
countrymen.  It  even  has  its  jealous  side,  and  renders 
it  hard  for  new  aspirants  to  gain  their  share  of  wel- 
come. But  New  York  has  been  to  her  later  poets, 
somewhat  as  Oxford  Street  was  to  De  Quincey,  a  stony- 
hearted mother.  This  is  partly  due  to  the  standards 
of  success  established  by  monetary  power  and  prosper- 
ity, and  partly  to  the  accident  that  here,  more  than  in 
the  East,  idealists  have  had  to  live  by  all  sorts  of  very 
practical  work.  Writers  have  been  tolerated  and  even 
welcomed,  but  not  honored  and  taken  as  counsellors 
until  they  have  proved  themselves  worldly  wise,  or 
gained  their  influence  elsewhere.  Then  New  York 
has  been  proud  of  them,  in  her  awkward  way,  and 
used  them  at  need,  but  has  assigned  to  the  provinces 


A  n  inde- 
pendent 
class. 


Eastern 
regard/or 
letters  and 
song. 


Words- 
worth's 
"  Greece? 
p.  7a. 


Metropoli- 
tan indif- 
ference. 


54 


GROWTH  OF  THE  AMERICAN  SCHOOL. 


Poets  of 
the  artistic 
and  cosmo- 
politan 
type. 

(See  Chap. 
XII.,  and 
Index.) 


the  duty  of  reading  their  works.  Bryant  came  to  be 
her  most  honored  citizen,  and  for  some  years  was  a 
kind  of  literary  Doge;  his  city  knew  that  he  was  a 
poet,  for  the  country  had  told  her  so.  It  would  be 
interesting  to  learn  how  large  a  proportion  of  the 
wealthy  classes  among  whom  he  was  a  peer,  and  who 
placed  him  at  the  head  of  feasts  and  civic  gather- 
ings, knew  this  through  an  appreciative  knowledge 
of  his  poetry.  Such,  however,  is  apt  to  be  the  state 
of  things  in  a  great  commercial  centre,  —  so  great 
that  it  matures  slowly,  and  must  long  await  that 
splendid  prime  of  which  smaller  towns  earlier  furnish 
types  in  miniature ;  and  under  just  such  conditions 
many  a  poet  has  struggled,  yet  gone  down  to  time 
and  fame. 

The  artistic  bent  of  Parsons  and  Story,  of  Poe, 
Taylor,  Stoddard,  and  Aldrich,  in  New  York;  of  the 
Philadelphians,  Boker  and  Read ;  of  the  Southerners, 
Thompson,  Timrod,  Hayne,  Lanier,  and  Esten  Cooke ; 
and  of  various  younger  writers  who  justify  future  no- 
tice, has  been  plainly  seen  in  the  application  of  each 
man's  gift,  whatever  its  degree.  They  have  cared  for 
poetry  alone,  and  have  believed  its  country  to  be  uni- 
versal, and  that  England,  whose  poets  conspicuously 
avail  themselves  of  the  materials  and  atmosphere  of 
other  lands,  should  be  the  last  to  lay  down  a  law  of 
restriction.  Herein,  nevertheless,  they  subject  their 
work,  upon  its  general  merits,  to  comparison  with 
models  which  they  scarce  could  hope  to  surpass ;  for 
only  the  highest  excellence  could  draw  attention  to 
them  as  poets  of  America.  Some  of  our  verse  com- 
posed in  this  wise  has  been  so  charming,  and  withal 
so  original,  as  to  make  reputations.  Poe's  lyrics  are 
an  example,  and  others  besides  Poe,  less  conspicuous 
as  victims  of  unrest   and   heroes  of   strange  careers, 


PARSONS.  —  NORTON.— STORY. 


55 


also   have    represented    the    conflict  with  materialism, 
and  have  shown  as  genuine  a  gift  and  a  wider  range. 
Dr.  Parsons  holds  a  place  of  his  own.     He  is  one  of  | 
those  rare  poets  whose  infrequent  work  is  so  beauti- 
ful as  to  make  us  wish  for  more.     In  quality,  at  least, 
it  is  of  a  kind  with  Landor's ;  his  touch  is  sure,  and 
has  at  command  the  choicer  modes  of   lyrical  art, — 
those  which,  although   fashion   may  overslaugh  them, 
return  again,  and  enable   a  true   poet   to  be  quite  as 
original  as  when  hunting  devices  previously  unessayed. 
His  independence,  on  the  other  hand,  is  exhibited  in 
his  free  renderings  of  Dante.      These,  with  Eliot  Nor- 
ton's exquisite  translation  of   the  "Vita  Nuova,"  and 
Longfellow's   of   the   entire    "  Commedia,"    with    Bry- 
ant's of  the  "Iliad"  and  "Odyssey,"  Brooks's  of  vari- 
ous German   authors,  Taylor's  of   "  Faust,"   and  with 
the   kindred   achievements  of    Munford,    Cranch,    Le- 
land,  Macdonough,    Alger,    Long,    Duffield,  Wilstach, 
Coles,  Howland,  Miss  Preston,  Miss  Frothingham,  and 
Emma   Lazarus   (whose   poetic  version   of   Heine   re- 
cently appeared),  have  made  the  American  school  of 
translation   somewhat   eminent.     Parsons'    briefer  po- 
ems often  are   models,  but  occasionally  show  a  trace 
of    that   stiffness   which   too   little   employment  gives 
even  the  hand  of   daintier  sense.     "Lines  on  a  Bust 
of  Dante,"  in  structure,  diction,  loftiness  of   thought, 
is  the  peer  of  any  modern  lyric  in  our  tongue.     Inver- 
sion, the  vice  of  stilted   poets,  becomes  with  him   an 
excellence,  and   old  forms  and  accents  are  rehandled 
and    charged  with    life    anew.      It  is  to   be   regretted 
that   Dr.  Parsons  has  not   used   his  gift  more   freely. 
He   has   been  a  poet  for   poets,  rather  than  for  the 
people;  but  many  types   are   required  to  fill  out   the 
hemicycle    of    a   nation's    literature.      Story's   various 
talents  and  acquirements  as  a  scholar,  painter,  sculp- 


Thomas 
William 
Parsons  : 
1819- 


Transla- 
tions. 

Charles 
Eliot  Nor- 
ton:  1827- 

Charles 
Timothy 
Brooks  : 
1813-83. 

{See  In- 
dex.) 


Parsons  a 
master  of 
lyric  verse. 


William 
Wetmore 
Story: 
1819- 


56 


GROWTH  OF  THE  AMERICAN  SCHOOL. 


Taylor. 


Conflicts 
with  di- 
dacticism 
and  tradi- 
tion. 

Thomas 
Buchanan 
Read  : 
1822-72. 


George 
Henry 
Boker: 
1823- 


tor,    author,    and  what   not,    and    his    prolonged    resi- 
dence and   studies    abroad,  are  mirrored  in  his  verse. 
This,  indeed,  is   so  un-American   that   I  was  held   to 
blame  by  a  prominent  London  journal  for  not  review- 
ing him   as   a   British-born   and  Victorian  poet.     He 
has   extreme   refinement,    but  is   a  close    follower  of 
Browning's  lyrico-dramatic  method,  and  more  novel  in 
his  choice  of  themes  than  in  their  treatment.     "  Cleo- 
patra "   and    "  Praxiteles   and    Phryne  "    are   striking 
pieces,  and  show  him  at  his  best.     Among  the  group 
under   notice   was   the    ardent   and    generous   Taylor, 
whose   seniority  in  death  has  caused   my  selection  of 
him  as   one   of  those  who  illustrate   the  rise   of  the 
American  school,  and  upon  whom  alone  I  venture  any 
extended  criticism.     Poe,  the  eldest  of   the  art-group, 
and  the  subject  of  a  future  chapter,  is  related  to  the 
others  as  a  toiling  professional  writer,  whose   ideality 
maintained    itself    apart   from   the   atmosphere   about 
him.     In   many  respects   he   is   an   exception   to   the 
rest,  but,  on  the  whole,  may  be  counted   the  first  to 
revolt   against  didacticism,  from  the   artist's   point  of 
view;  while  Whitman,  on   the   other  hand,  is  hostile 
to  art-tradition  and  conventionalism,  as  an  apostle  of 
the  democracy  of  the  future.     Another  artist-poet  was 
Buchanan  Read,  whose   song  was  of   a  more  genuine 
quality  than  the  painting  which  he  made  his  vocation. 
His  idyllic  verse  fairly  portrayed  the  rural  life  of  his 
own  State,  but  his  successes  were  a  few  rhymed   lyr- 
ics and   idyls  that  will   be   preserved.     "The  Closing 
Scene"   gained    a    reputation    through    its   descriptive 
beauty  and   clever  treatment   of   a   standard   form   of 
verse.     His  townsman,  Boker,  is  the  eldest  of  a  little 
group  to   be   described   in  a  chapter  on  Bayard   Tay- 
lor.    A   close   study  of  the   English  poets,  especially 
of  the  Elizabethan  brotherhood,  led  him  to  dramatic 


READ.  —  BOKER.  —  STODDARD. 


57 


composition.  Although  his  plays  follow  old  models, 
and  are  founded  upon  the  historic  themes  of  foreign 
lands,  they  have  sterling  dramatic  and  poetic  quali- 
ties. Thirty-five  years  ago,  in  an  essay  upon  the  con- 
dition and  prospect  of  our  literature,  Dr.  Griswold 
said  that  "  the  success  of  the  plays  of  Bird  and  Con- 
rad, and  the  failure  of  those  of  Longfellow  and  Wil- 
lis," showed  that  there  was  still  "  patriotism  enough 
among  us  to  prefer  works  with  the  American  inspira- 
tion to  those  of  any  degree  of  artistic  merit  without 
it."  But  it  is  recorded  to  the  credit  of  some  of  Bo- 
lter's plays,  which  are  of  a  poetic  and  literary  mould, 
and  bear  the  test  of  reading,  that,  like  their  humbler 
prototypes,  —  the  acting  plays  of  Bird,  Conrad,  Sar- 
gent, Mathews,  and  others,  —  they  were  found  to  have 
the  life  and  substance  that  could  gain  them  favor, 
not  only  in  the  closet,  but  on  the  stage.  Some  of 
them  are  antecedent  to  the  realistic  manner  of  our 
own  time  ;  others  have  won  renewed  success  in  the 
present  day,  and  proved  themselves  to  be  of  a  type 
superior  to  the  chance  and  change  of  fashion.  They 
show,  one  and  all,  a  manly  hand,  and  the  healthy  im- 
agination of  the  poet,  their  author.  His  minor  pieces 
are  of  uneven  quality,  some  of  them  thoroughly  na- 
tional and  spirited.  Such  lyrics  as  "On  Board  the 
Cumberland,"  "  A  Ballad  of  Sir  John  Franklin,"  and 
the  "  Dirge  for  a  Soldier,"  often  continue  a  poet's 
name  more  surely  than  the  efforts  which  in  truth  are 
his  masterpieces. 

Stoddard,  the  life-long  friend  and  brother  in  song 
of  Taylor  and  Boker,  is  still  in  full  voice.  A  New 
Englander  born,  the  honors  of  his  life  and  service 
belong  to  New  York.  The  whole  range  of  his  poetry 
has  the  unrestricted  or  cosmopolitan  tendency  of  which 
I  speak.     He  had  poor  advantages  in  youth,  but  an 


Introduc- 
tion to 
"The 
Prose 
Writers  of 
A  mericaV 
ByR.  W. 
Griswold. 
1847. 


Epes  Sar- 
gent : 
1813-80. 

Cornelius 
Mathews  : 
1817- 


Boker's 
lyrics. 


Richard 
Henry 
Stoddard: 
1825- 


58 


GROWTH  OF  THE  AMERICAN  SCHOOL. 


An  imag- 
inative 
poet. 


His  blank- 
verse,  lyr- 
ics, etc. 


absolute  bent  for  letters,  and  a  passion  for  the  beau- 
tiful resembling  that  of  Poe.  His  knowledge  of  Eng- 
lish literature,  old  and  new,  early  became  so  valuable 
that  his  younger  associates,  drawn  to  him  by  admira- 
tion of  his  poetry,  never  failed  to  profit  by  his  learn- 
ing and  suggestions.  His  life  has  been  peculiarly 
that  of  a  writer,  with  its  changes  and  pleasurable 
pains,  and  is  marked  by  independence,  sensitiveness, 
devotion  to  his  calling,  and  pride  in  the  city  with 
whose  literary  growth  and  labor  he  is  identified.  The 
characteristics  of  Stoddard's  verse  are  affluence,  sin- 
cere feeling,  strength,  a  manner  unmistakably  his  own, 
very  delicate  fancy,  and,  above  all,  an  imagination  at 
times  exceeded  by  that  of  no  other  American  poet. 
This  last  quality  pervades  his  ambitious  pieces,  and 
at  times  breaks  out  suddenly  in  the  minor  verse 
through  which  he  is  best  known.  The  exigencies  of 
his  profession  have  too  constantly  drawn  upon  his  re- 
sources; the  bulk  of  his  miscellaneous  verse  is  large, 
and  to  this  is  somewhat  due  its  unevenness.  No 
poet  is  more  unequal ;  few  have  more  plainly  failed 
now  and  then.  On  the  other  hand,  few  have  reached 
a  higher  tone,  and  a  selection  could  be  made  from 
his  poems  upon  which  to  base  a  lasting  reputation. 
"The  Fisher  and  Charon,"  "  The  Dead  Master,"  and 
the  "  Hymn  to  the  Sea,"  are  noble  pieces  of  English 
blank  verse,  the  secret  of  whose  measure  is  given 
only  to  the  elect ;  one  is  impressed  by  the  art,  the 
thought,  the  imagination,  which  sustain  these  poems, 
and  the  Shakespeare  and  Lincoln  odes.  Stoddard's 
abundant  songs  and  lyrics  are  always  on  the  wing 
and  known  at  first  sight,  —  a  skylark  brood  whose 
notes  are  rich  with  feeling.  The  sweet  and  direct 
method  of  The  King's  Bell  placed  him  high  in  the 
ranks   of  writers   of   narrative   verse.      Among  poets 


SAXE.  —  LELAND.  —  BUTLER. 


59 


equal  to  him  in  years,  he  is,  perhaps,  the  foremost  of 
the  artistic  or  cosmopolitan  group. 

If  I  cared  to  give,  in  detail,  various  by-road  illus- 
trations of  the  American  spirit,  I  could  cite  many  in- 
stances where  the  brooding  humor,  the  quaintness 
and  frankness,  the  pluck  and  fun  and  carelessness,  of 
our  new  people  long  since  cropped  out  in  rhyme. 
These  characteristics  give  life  to  the  wise  and  witty 
purpose  of  Holmes's  and  Lowell's  satires,  and  to  the 
verses  of  Saxe,  Leland,  Fields,  and  Butler.  We  have 
their  continuance  and  diversity  in  the  clever,  off-hand 
fantasies  of  younger  men.  There  is  no  lack  of  dia- 
lect, bric-a-brac,  and  society  verse.  Some  of  our  young 
Bohemians  all  at  play,  twenty  years  ago,  —  of  whom 
George  Arnold  was  American  by  birth,  as  were  Hal- 
pine  and  O'Brien  by  adoption,  —  while  not  without 
their  earnest  moods,  did  rollicking  work  of  this  kind, 
and  in  Arnold's  case  it  seemed  to  his  friends  but  an 
offshoot  of  the  better  work  he  had  it  in  him  to  do. 
The  Dean  among  our  writers  of  poems  for  occasions 
is  unquestionably  Dr.  Holmes,  by  virtue  of  his  apt 
response  to  the  instant  call,  and  of  the  wit,  wisdom, 
conviction,  and  the  scholarly  polish  that  relegate  his 
lightest  productions  to  the  select  domain  of  art. 

To  Whitman  a  chapter  will  be  given,  and  is  needed 
for  the  fair  consideration  of  nis  traits  and  attitude. 
He  represents,  first  of  all,  his  own  personality  ;  sec- 
ondly, the  conflict  with  aristocracy  and  formalism. 
Against  the  latter  he  early  took  the  position  of  an 
iconoclast,  avowing  that  the  time  had  come  in  which 
to  create  an  American  art  by  rejection  of  all  forms, 
irrespective  of  their  natural  basis,  which  had  come  to 
us  from  the  past.  In  their  stead  he  proffered  a  form 
of  his  own.  If  I  rightly  understand  the  meaning  of 
one   or  two   recent   papers  by  Mr.  Whitman,  his   ex-| 


A  merican 
satire  and 
Jeux- 
d' Esprit. 

fohn  God- 
frey Saxe : 
1816- 

Charles 
Godfrey 
Leland: 
1824- 

J antes 
Thomas 
Fields : 
1816-81. 

William 
Allen 
Butler: 
1825- 

{See  Chap. 
XII.) 


Holmes. 


Whitman. 


6o 


GROWTH  OF  THE  AMERICAN  SCHOOL. 


A  genuine 
home- 
school,  thus 
having 
existed, 
should  be 
valued  at 
its  worth. 


See  "  No. 
Am.  Re- 
view'''' : 
Jan.  1881. 


Thefirst 
course 

ended. 


treme  views,  in  deprecation  of  what  is  and  anticipa- 
tion of  what  is  to  be,  are  now  somewhat  tempered 
by  years  and  experience.  He  is  a  man  of  striking 
physical  and  mental  qualities,  and  excels  most  writers 
in  personal  influence,  tact,  and  adroitness  as  a  man 
of  the  world.  He  is  an  avowed  champion  of  democ- 
racy, and  accepted  as  such  by  the  refined  classes  at 
home  and  abroad.  I  shall  refer  to  his  minute  knowl- 
edge and  healthy  treatment  of  the  American  land- 
scape, of  the  phases  and  products  of  outdoor  Nature, 
for  in  this  respect  his  most  fragmentary  pieces  show 
the  handicraft  of  an  artist  and  poet.  • 

We  need  not  continue  farther  the  analysis  suggested 
in  the  previous  chapter.  I  have  not  tried  to  make  a 
rigid  classification  of  all  who  have  borne  a  part  in 
the  rise  of  a  home-school,  but  to  observe  the  general 
groups  of  which  some  of  our  elder  poets  may  be 
called  the  leaders,  and  the  condition  and  sentiment 
by  which  their  work  has  been  affected.  Enough  has 
been  said,  I  think,  to  justify  the  assertion  that  such 
a  school  already  has  had  a  career  which  Americans 
should  be  swift  to  recognize  and  slow  to  undervalue. 
One  "  of  your  own  poets  "  has  taken  a  different  view, 
declaring  that  a  barren  void  exists, —  that  our  poetry 
has  been  marked  by  an  absence  of  patriotism,  and 
that  it  has  shown  brain  and  no  soul.  A  more  incor- 
rect or  wilfully  pessimistic  statement  never  was  made. 
In  every  department  of  art,  times  of  energy  are  di- 
vided by  times  of  calm.  The  first  course  is  run,  and 
there  is  a  temporary  halt,  so  far  as  poetry  is  con- 
cerned. The  imaginative  element  in  our  literature  is 
active  as  ever,  but  in  other  directions.  Meantime, 
we  have  singers  in  their  prime,  resting  their  voices 
for  the  moment,  and  others  whose  fresh  notes  will 
soon  be  more   definitely   heard.     Both   these   classes 


THE    WRITER'S  PROVINCE. 


61 


will  come  within  our  review.  The  younger  poets, 
upon  whom  the  future  depends,  must  prove  them- 
selves well  endowed,  if  they  are  to  succeed  to  the 
laurels  of  those  who,  blessed  with  years  and  honors, 
have  held  the  affection  of  life-long  readers  scattered 
far  and  wide.  It  is  of  those  elders  only,  the  repre- 
sentative founders  of  our  school,  that  I  have  under- 
taken to  write  at  any  length.  To  pass  critical  judg- 
ments upon  those  of  my  own,  or  a  younger,  genera- 
tion is  beyond  my  province.  The  time  will  come 
when  some  of  them  will  in  turn  occupy  the  high 
places,  and  furnish  typical  illustrations  of  poetry  and 
the  poetic  life.  In  that  near  future  there  will  not  be 
wanting  critics  to  measure  their  works,  nor  hands  to 
award  the  recompense  that  is  due  to  them  who  add 
to  the  sum  of  human  pleasure  by  their  ministry  of 
song. 


{See  Chap- 
ter XII.) 


CHAPTER    III. 


WILLIAM   CULLEN   BRYANT. 


Impressive 
feeling 
excited  by 
the  poet 's 
death. 


Born  in 
Cumming- 
ton,  Mass., 
Nov.  3, 
1794. 


I. 

WHEN  Bryant  died,  in  the  flowery  season  that 
had  inspired  his  sweetest  lyric,  the  general 
pause  and  hush  were  singularly  impressive.  To  the 
death  of  no  other  American,  for  a  long  time  before 
and  after,  could  be  applied  so  aptly  that  Indian  met- 
aphor of  the  sound  of  the  fall  of  a  great  oak  in  the 
forest.  The  feeling  was  not  one  of  unexpectedness, 
although  his  old  age  was  free  from  decrepitude,  —  as 
if  some  deity  kinder  than  Aurora  had  given  him  im- 
mortality without  decay;  not  one  of  sorrow,  for  he 
lived  beyond  the  usual  limit  of  life;  not  that  which 
we  have  when  some  man  of  office,  rank,  entanglement 
in  great  affairs,  suddenly  passes  away.  Yet  the  sta- 
tion of  "the  father  of  American  song"  was  unique, 
and  his  loss  was  something  strange  and  positive.  He 
stood  alone,  —  in  certain  respects,  an  incomparable 
figure.  He  had  become  not  only  a  representative  cit- 
izen, journalist,  poet,  but  the  serene,  transfigured  ideal 
of  a  good  and  venerable  man. 

As  a  writer  he  had  been  before  the  public  from  a 
date  near  the  beginning  of  the  century,  and  so 
changeless  through  all  its  changes  that  his  critics,  in 
estimating  the  poet  just  dead,  really  were  judging  the 
poet  of  fifty  years  before,  instead  of  guessing  at  the 


THE  MAN  AND   THE  POET. 


63 


verdict   of    time    upon   his   productions.      Howsoever 
they  might   differ  as  to  the  measure  of  Bryant's  gift, 
and  of  Bryant  the  man,  one  thing  was  sure :  no  minor 
personage  could  gain,  and  retain  to  the   last,  such  a 
hold  upon  popular  interest,  honor,  deferential  esteem. 
Others,  before  reaching  his  years,  have  had  their  rise 
and  decline,  outlasting  themselves,  and  finding  occa- 
sion to  declare  with  Cato  Major,  "  It  is  a  hard  thing, 
Romans,  to  render  an  account  before  the  men  of  a 
period   different  from  that  in  which  one  has  lived!" 
But  here  was  one  who  steadily  grew  to  be  the  emblem 
of   our  finest   order   of    citizenship,  possibly  its  most 
acceptable  type.     This,  as  constantly  was  evident,  be- 
came impressed  even  upon  coarse  and  ordinary  per- 
sons, singly  or  associated  in  legislative  bodies  ;  hardly 
judges,  one  would  think,  of  such  a  matter,  but  accept- 
ing without  cavil    the  public  conception  and  the  esti- 
mate of  the  thoughtful   and  refined.     There   is   good 
reason  at  the  base  of  every  sustained  opinion  of  the 
sort.     What  gave  Bryant   just   this  degree  of   special 
eminence?     Not  alone  that  he  was  a  virtuous   man, 
and   a   patriot   in    every    sense;   a   journalist,   linked 
with  traditions  of  sturdy  service  in   the  past ;  a  clear 
and  vigorous  writer  and  thinker ;  a  wise  and  reverend 
sage,  most  sound  of  body  and  mind.     He  was  not  a 
great  and  representative  editor,  according  to  our  mod- 
ern  standard.     Otherwise,    he   was  all   these,   and   in 
their  combination  held  a  rank  excelled  by  none  and 
reached  only  by  the  excepted  few.      Beyond  and  in- 
cluding all  these,  he  was  a  poet.     It  may  be  placed 
to  the  credit  of  the  art  of  song  that,  being  a  person 
of  such  attributes,  the  addition  of  the  poetic  gift  made 
him   a  bright,  particular  star.     It   is  the  poet,  above 
all,  that  we  must  observe  and  estimate. 
Yet  in  order  to  discover  the  quality  and  limitations 





Fash- 
ioned to 
much 
honors 


The  "fore- 
most citi- 


Thepoet. 


The 


64 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT. 


A  typical 
republican. 


Mental 
and  moral 
traits. 


His  posi- 
tion 

strength- 
ened by 
worldly 
success. 


of  his  genius,  he  must  be  considered  not  only  as  an 
American  poet  who  represented  his  country  at  a  cer- 
tain time,  but  as  a  man  speaking  for  himself.  And  in 
this  wise,  first  seeking  a  key  to  his  literary  value,  we 
see  that  he  had  become  a  most  satisfying  type  of  the 
republican,  joining  the  traditional  gravity,  purity,  and 
patriotic  wisdom  of  the  forefathers  with  the  modern- 
ness  and  freshness  of  our  own  day.  His  life,  public 
and  private,  was  in  keeping  with  his  speech  and  writ- 
ings. We  often  say  of  a  poet  or  artist  that  he  should 
not  be  judged  like  other  men  by  his  outward  irrele- 
vant mark  or  habit;  that  to  see  his  best,  his  truest 
self  you  must  read  his  poems  or  study  his  paintings. 
In  reading  Bryant's  prose  and  verse,  and  in  observing 
the  poet  himself,  our  judgments  were  the  same.  He 
always  held  in  view  liberty,  law,  wisdom,  piety,  faith  j 
his  sentiment  was  unsentimental ;  he  never  whined  nor 
found  fault  with  condition  or  nature ;  he  was  robust, 
but  not  tyrannical ;  frugal,  but  not  too  severe ;  grave, 
yet  full  of  shrewd  and  kindly  humor.  Absolute  sim- 
plicity characterized  him.  Ethics  were  always  in  sight. 
He  was,  indeed,  an  "  old  man  for  counsel "  ;  what  he 
learned  in  youth  from  the  lives  and  precepts  of 
Washington,  Hamilton,  and  their  compeers,  that  he 
taught  and  practised  to  the  last.  His  intellectual 
faculties,  like  his  physical,  were  balanced  to  the  dis- 
creetest  level,  and  this  without  abasing  his  poetic  fire. 
His  genius  was  not  shown  by  the  advance  of  one 
faculty  and  the  impediment  of  others ;  it  was  the 
spirit  of  an  even  combination,  and  a  fine  one. 

It  is  true  that  his  practical  success  —  the  worldly 
substance  he  had  gained  by  the  thrift  and  prudence 
that  "  poor  Richard's  "  maxims  inculcate  —  gave  him 
a  prestige  in  the  wealth-respecting  metropolis  which  as 
a  poet  alone  he  could  not,   in  his  generation,   have 


LENGTH  OF  SERVICE. 


65 


secured.  It  brought  him  near,  as  Mr.  Hazeltine  has 
pointed  out,  to  the  hosts  of  the  Philistines,  but  it 
also  impressed  them  with  a  conviction  that  there 
must  be  something  in  poetry  after  all.  They  saw  him 
visibly  haloed  with  a  distinction  beyond  that  which 
wealth  and  civic  influence  could  bestow.  Besides, 
even  Philistia  has  its  aesthetic  rituals  and  pageantry, 
and  it  was  with  a  gracious  and  picturesque  sense  of 
the  fitness  of  things  that  he  bore  his  stately  part  in 
our  festivals  and  processions.  To  this  extent  he  was 
conventional,  but  he  made  conventionalism  suggestive 
and  often  the  promoter  of  thought  and  art. 


II. 

Here,  then,  was  a  minstrel  who,  in  appearance, 
more  than  others  of  a  readier  lyrical  genius,  seemed 
not  unlike  the  legendary  bard  of  Gray :  — 

"The  poet  stood, 
(Loose  his  beard  and  hoary  hair 
Streamed,  like  a  meteor,  to  the  troubled  air), 
And  with  a  master's  hand,  and  prophet's  fire, 
Struck  the  deep  sorrows  of  his  lyre." 

Look  at  the  extent  of  the  period  through  which  he 
flourished.  He  began  in  the  early  springtime  of 
Wordsworth,  and  long  outlived  new  men  like  Baude- 
laire and  Poe.  The  various  epochs  of  his  career 
scarcely  bear  upon  our  consideration  of  its  product, 
which,  after  his  escape  from  the  manner  of  Pope, 
was  of  an  even  quality  during  seventy  years.  In  this 
he  was  fortunate  and  unfortunate.  The  former,  be- 
cause his  early  pieces  were  so  noteworthy  that,  in  the 
dearth  of  American  poetry,  they  at  once  became  home 
classics  for  a  homely  people,  and  one  generation  after 
another  learned  them  admiringly  by  heart.  At  this 
5 


Philistia. 


"■The 
Bard." 


A  pro- 
longed and 
equable  ca- 


66 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT. 


Hisfeeling 
A  merican. 


Emerson^ 
at  the  Cen- 
tury Club, 
on  Bry- 
ant's joth 
birthday. 


time,  even  though  composed  in  the  latest  fashion  and 
of  greater  merit  than  Bryant's,  an  author's  pieces 
could  not  obtain  for  him  such  recognition  and  fame. 
But,  owing  to  this  otherwise  good  fortune,  he  worked 
under  restrictions  from  which  he  never  was  even  meas- 
urably freed.  Before  observing  these,  it  again  may  be 
noted  that  his  poetic  career  had  neither  rise,  height, 
nor  decline.  He  formed  certain  methods  wholly  nat- 
ural to  him  in  early  youth,  and  was  at  once  as  admi- 
rable a  poet  as  he  ever  afterward  became.  Through- 
out his  prolonged  term  of  life  he  sang  without  haste 
or  effort,  and  always  expressed  himself  rather  than 
the  varying  methods  of  the  time. 

From  the  first  he  was  in  sympathy  with  the  aspect, 
atmosphere,  feeling,  of  his  own  country.  His  ten- 
dency and  manner  were  determined  during  the  idyllic 
period  of  this  republic,  when  nature  and  the  thoughts 
which  it  suggested  were  themes  for  poets,  rather  than 
the  dramatic  relations  of  man  with  man.  His  senti- 
ment was  affected  by  the  meditative  verse  of  Cowper 
and  Wordsworth,  who  rose  above  didacticism,  or 
made  it  imaginative  by  poetic  insight.  Emerson  said 
of  Bryant :  "  This  native,  original,  patriotic  poet.  I 
say  original :  I  have  heard  him  charged  with  being  of 
a  certain  school.  I  heard  it  with  surprise,  and  asked, 
What  school?  For  he  never  reminded  me  of  Gold- 
smith, or  Wordsworth,  or  Byron,  or  Moore.  I  found 
him  always  original,  —  a  true  painter  of  the  face  of 
this  country,  and  of  the  sentiment  of  his  own  peo- 
ple." This  is,  in  a  sense,  true ;  yet  there  can  be  little 
doubt  that,  in  most  respects,  Wordsworth  was  the 
master  of  his  youth.  All  pupils  must  acknowledge 
masters  at  the  beginning,  but  Murillo  was  Murillo 
none  the  less,  although  he  ground  colors  for  Castillo 
and  studied  with  Velasquez.     Bryant  ground  his  colors 


NATURE'S  CELEBRANT. 


67 


in  the  open  air.  His  originality  consisted  in  deriv- 
ing from  his  studies  a  method  natural  to  his  own  gift 
and  condition.  The  elder  Dana  puts  him  on  record 
as  saying  that  "  upon  opening  Wordsworth  a  thousand 
springs  seemed  to  gush  up  at  once  in  his  heart,  and 
the  face  of  nature  of  a  sudden  to  change  into  a 
strange  freshness  and  life."  Certainly  he  was  not 
cradled  into  poetry  by  wrong,  nor  perturbed  by  the 
wild  and  morbid  passions  of  a  wayward  youth.  We 
can  imagine  him  a  serious  and  meditative  lad,  directed 
by  the  guidance  of  a  scholarly  father,  well  versed  in 
the  favorite  poets  of  that  day,  —  Pope,  Thomson,  Aken- 
side,  Cowper,  —  and  at  first  accepting  them  as  models  ; 
finally,  obtaining  for  himself  the  clues  to  a  true  per- 
ception of  Nature,  and  with  his  soul  suddenly  exalted 
by  a  sense  of  her 

"  Authentic  tidings  of  invisible  things  ; 
Of  ebb  and  flow,  and  ever-during  power  ; 
And  central  peace,  subsisting  at  the  heart 
Of  endless  agitation." 

This  sense  was  fostered,  throughout  the  changing 
year,  by  the  landscape  of  the  pastoral  region  of  Mas- 
sachusetts in  which  he  had  his  growth.  I  have  re- 
ferred in  a  previous  chapter  to  Hugo's  works  illus- 
trating the  conflicts  by  which  man  progresses  to  his 
enfranchisement,  the  conflicts  with  Nature,  Supersti- 
tion, Tyranny,  and  Society.  From  the  third  of  these 
opponents  our  fathers  fled  to  a  new  continent,  choosing 
to  found  a  nationality,  and  entering  upon  that  primeval 
conflict  with  nature  which  to  an  already  civilized  peo- 
ple is  not  without  compensations.  It  results,  like  a 
quarrel  between  generous  lovers,  in  a  betrothal  of  the 
one  to  the  other,  and  of  such  an  alliance  Bryant  was 
our  celebrant.  The  delights  of  nature,  and  medita- 
tions upon  the  universality  of  life  and  death,  withdrew 


IVords- 
worth's 

pupa. 


Our  medi- 
tative poet 
of  nature. 


68 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT. 


Allied  to 
tur  early 
landscape- 
fainters. 
Seep.  47. 


Tone,  and 
breadth  0/ 
treatment. 


him  from  the  study  of  the  individual  world.  Thus  he 
became  a  philosophic  minstrel  of  the  woods  and  wa- 
ters, the  foremost  of  American  landscape-poets.  In 
the  contest  with  primeval  Nature,  man  signalizes  his 
victories  by  educating  and  rendering  more  beautiful 
his  captive ;  she,  in  turn,  gains  a  potent  influence  over 
him,  for  a  long  while  driving  her  rivals  from  his  heart, 
and  compels  him  in  his  art  and  song  to  express  her 
features  and  her  inspiration. 

The  first  enduring  American  school  of  painting  was 
a  landscape-school.  We  have  observed  the  analogy 
between  Bryant's  poetry  and  the  broad,  cool  canvas 
of  the  founders  of  that  school,  —  the  works  of  Durand, 
Cole,  Kensett,  Inness,  various  as  they  may  be  in  depth, 
tranquillity,  or  power.  Such  a  harmony  exists  between 
the  soil,  the  climate,  the  fauna,  and  the  flora  of  an 
isothermal  zone.  Bryant,  who  at  once  became  emi- 
nent in  his  special  walk,  therein  excelled  and  has 
outlasted  all  his  compeers  and  followers.  It  is  not 
unlikely  that  he  will  outlast  many  of  his  latest  succes- 
sors, notwithstanding  his  inferiority  when  persistence 
and  minuteness  of  observation  are  taken  into  account. 
Others  group  together  details,  compose  with  enthu- 
siasm, but  are  deficient  in  tone,  sentiment,  imagina- 
tive receptivity.  Tone  is  the  one  thing  needful  to  a 
true  interpretation  of  nature.  Thoreau  felt  this  when 
he  wrote  in  his  diary,  "  I  have  just  heard  the  flicker 
among  the  oaks  on  the  hillside  ushering  in  a  new 
dynasty.  .  .  .  Eternity  could  not  begin  with  more  se- 
curity and  momentousness  than  the  Spring.  The 
Summer's  eternity  is  reestablished  by  this  note.  All 
sights  and  sounds  are  seen  and  heard  both  in  time 
and  eternity;  and  when  the  eternity  of  any  sight  or 
sound  strikes  the  eye  or  ear,  they  are  intoxicated  with 
delight.  .  .  .  It  is  not  important  that  the  poet  should 


HIS  LIMITATIONS. 


69 


say  some  particular  thing,  but  that  he  should  speak  in 
harmony  with  nature.  The  tone  and  pitch  of  his  voice 
is  the  main  thing."  Bryant  is,  in  one  respect,  pecu- 
liarly unmodern.  Thoreau,  despite  his  own  language, 
caught  and  observed  every  detail.  Our  poet's  learn- 
ing was  not  scientific ;  he  lacked  the  minor  vision 
which,  an  added  gift,  enables  Tennyson  and  others 
to  give  such  charm  and  variety  to  their  work.  The 
ancients  may  have  recognized  all  shades  and  colors, 
but  they  specified  fewer  than  we  specify.  Byron, 
among  moderns,  painted  Nature  in  her  simple,  broad 
manifestations,  —  the  sea,  the  mountains,  the  sky, — 
subordinating  her  spirit  to  his  own  passion,  as  Bryant 
allies  it  with  his  own  tenderness  and  wisdom,  but  even 
he  was  not  her  poet  in  the  delicate,  microcosmic,  re- 
cent sense.  Both  certainly  lacked  the  cleverness  and 
infinite  precision  of  the  new  school.  Bryant  regarded 
nature  in  its  phenomenal  aspect,  careless  of  scientific 
realities.  What  he  gained  in  this  wise  was  the  ab- 
sence of  disillusionizing  fact,  and  a  fuller  understand- 
ing of  the  language  of  nature's  "  visible  forms  " ;  what 
he  lost  was  the  wide  and  various  range  opened  by  the 
endless  avenues  of  new-found  truth. 


III. 

Right  here  it  is  well  for  us  to  observe  his  limit- 
ations as  a  poet,  —  limitations  so  undeniable  as  to 
be  a  stumbling-block  in  the  way  of  those  who  lightly 
consider  his  genius,  and  sometimes  to  throw  him  out 
of  the  sympathetic  range  of  elegant  and  impartial 
minds.  His  longevity  was  not  allied  with  intellectual 
quickness  and  fertility,  but  seemed  almost  the  bio- 
logic result  of  inborn  slowness  and  deliberation.  He 
was  not  flexible,  not  facile  of  ear  and  voice.     He  con- 


Unscien- 

tific 

vision 


Bryant's 
limita- 
tions. 


Stiffness. 


7o 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT. 


Infertility. 


Deficiettt 
inpassion, 
humor, 
and  indi- 
viduality. 


sorted  with  nature  in  its  still  or  majestic  moods,  and 
derived  wisdom  and  refreshment  from  its  tenderness 
and  calm.  His  gift,  as  expressed  by  its  product,  was 
not  affluent,  and  scarcely  availed  itself  of  his  length 
of  years.  His  reticence  in  verse  was  habitual.  In 
old  age,  poets  are  apt  to  write  the  most,  and  often 
to  the  least  advantage,  but  his  pen  through  much  of 
this  period  was  chiefly  devoted  to  translation.  How 
little  of  his  own  poetry  he  produced  in  seventy  years, 
—  a  few  scant  volumes !  Think  of  Milton,  Landor, 
Wordsworth,  Tennyson,  Hugo,  Longfellow ;  of  the 
impetuous  work  of  Scott  and  Byron  ;  of  what  Shel- 
ley, who  gave  himself  to  song,  accomplished  before 
he  died,  at  twenty-nine.  Bryant  was  thought  to  be 
cold,  if  not  severe,  of  temperament.  The  most  fervent 
social  passions  of  his  song  are  those  of  friendship,  of 
filial  and  fraternal  love ;  his  intellectual  passion  is 
always  under  restraint,  even  when  moved  by  patriot- 
ism, liberty,  religious  faith.  There  is  still  less  of  ac- 
tion and  dramatic  quality  in  his  verse.  Humor,  the 
overflow  of  strength,  is  almost  absent  from  it,  —  when 
present,  sufficiently  awkward  ;  yet  it  should  be  noted 
that  in  conversation,  or  in  the  after-dinner  talks  and 
speeches  so  frequent  in  his  later  years,  his  humor 
was  continuous  and  charming,  full  of  kindly  gossip, 
wisdom,  and  mirth.  He  made,  as  we  have  seen,  little 
advance  upon  the  early  standard  of  his  work.  It 
would  seem  as  if,  under  the  lessons  of  a  father,  "  who 
taught  him  the  value  of  correctness  and  compression, 
and  enabled  him  to  distinguish  between  poetic  en- 
thusiasm and  fustian,"  he  there  and  then  matured, 
reached  a  certain  point,  and  became  set  and  station- 
ary. There  are  few  notable  expressions  and  separable 
lines  in  his  poetry.  In  his  stanzaic  verse,  following 
the  established  eighteenth-century  patterns,  he  scarcely 


STYLE  AND  DICTION. 


71 


can  be  said  to  have  a  style  of  his  own.  Stanzas  might 
be  quoted  from  Collins,  Goldsmith,  Cowper,  even  Watts, 
any  one  of  which  would  pass  for  Bryant's.  A  painter 
said  to  me,  when  I  referred  to  the  mannerism  of  a 
"  characteristic  "  picture  by  a  certain  artist,  "  Yes,  but 
it  is  well  that  it  should  not  look  like  anybody  else's ; 
it  is  well  to  be  known  by  one's  manner,  and  to  have 
one's  manner  known."  Where  Bryant  was  most  im- 
pressive —  that  is  to  say,  in  his  blank-verse  poems  — 
he  had  a  positive  and  unmistakable  style,  quite  distinct 
even  from  that  of  his  master,  Wordsworth.  Finally, 
his  diction,  when  not  confined  to  that  Saxon  English  at 
every  man's  use,  is  bald  and  didactic,  —  always  senten- 
tious, but  less  frequently  rich  and  full.  He  had  a  lim- 
ited vocabulary  at  command;  I  should  think  that  no 
modern  poet,  approaching  him  in  fame,  has  made  use 
of  fewer  words.  His  range  is  like  that  of  Goldsmith, 
restricted  to  the  simpler  phrases  of  our  tongue.  Other 
poets,  of  an  equally  pure  diction,  show  here  and  there, 
by  rare  and  fine  words,  the  extent  of  their  unused  re- 
sources, and  that  they  voluntarily  confine  themselves 
to  "the  strength  of  the  positive  degree." 

In  the  face  of  all  this,  Bryant's  poetry  has  had,  and 
will  continue  to  have,  a  lasting  charm  for  many  of  the 
noblest  minds.  Since  this  is  not  due  to  his  length 
of  years,  —  for  he  was  not  alone  in  that  possession, 
—  nor  to  richness  of  detail  and  imagery,  nor  to  his 
having  adapted  himself,  like  Whittier,  to  successive 
changes  of  thought  and  diction,  how  is  it  that  his 
genius  triumphed  over  its  confessed  limitations  ?  To 
understand  this,  his  poetry  must  be  judged  as  a  whole, 
and  not  by  its  affluence  or  flexibility ;  and  it  also  must 
be  studied  in  connection  with  its  author's  surround- 
ings and  career. 


A  scant  vo- 
cabulary. 


72 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT. 


A  child  of 
the  far 

past. 


"The  Em- 
bargo," 
1808. 


topsis." 


Its  influ- 
ence on  our 
poets. 


IV. 

The  fact  must  be  kept  in  sight  that  he  was  the 
creature  of  our  early  period.  Owing  to  an  extreme 
precocity,  his  literary  career  began  at  a  date  prior  even 
to  that  which  the  record  of  his  age  would  suggest ; 
he  was  writing  and  printing  verse  in  a  time  when  the 
eighteenth-century  notabilities  on  his  father's  shelves 
were  still  the  approved  models  of  style.  We  find  him 
in  his  fourteenth  year  publishing  The  Embargo,  a  po- 
litical satire,  of  course  in  rhymed  pentameters,  and  it 
reached  a  second  edition.  With  the  anticipatory  in- 
stinct of  youth,  he  shortly  passed  from  the  influence 
of  Pope  to  that  of  Wordsworth,  and  quite  before  the 
founder  of  a  natural  school  brought  the  writers  of  Eng- 
land into  a  saving  consciousness  of  his  worth.  So 
that  Bryant's  quick  allegiance,  fostered  by  companion- 
ship with  nature  in  his  own  region,  really  placed  him 
then  as  far  ahead  of  his  time  as  he  seemed,  half  a 
century  afterward,  to  be  behindhand.  "Thanatopsis  " 
was  not  printed  in  the  u  North  American  Review  "  until 
his  twenty-first  year,  but  some  of  it  probably  was  com- 
posed when  he  was  sixteen,  and  it  certainly  was  com- 
pleted two  years  before  its  appearance.  (Other  youths 
have  written  good  verse  as  precociously,  but  no  one 
else  of  like  years  ever  composed  a  single  poem  that 
had  so  continuous  and  elevating  an  effect  upon  the 
literature  of  a  country.  Its  natural  tone,  its  solemn 
and  majestic  cadences,  deeply  impressed  writers  other 
than  himself,  so  that  "  Thanatopsis,"  and  the  lyric,  "  To 
a  Waterfowl,"  and  various  pieces  which  followed  it, 
became  the  suggestive  models  of  American  poets  until 
the  rise  of  Longfellow.  The  latter's  early  verse,  and 
more  than  one  poem  in  the  "Voices  of  the  Night," 
show  very  plainly  the  influence  of  Bryant,  —  that  Long- 


POETICAL    WORKS. 


73 


fellow  was  Bryant's  pupil  until  he  formed  his  own  pe- 
culiar style,  and,  in  fact,  we  have  his  word  for  it. 

The   "Inscription   for  the    Entrance   to   a  Wood," 
given  to  the  "  Review  "  at  the  same  time  with  "  Thana- 
topsis,"  is  of  interest  as  the  earliest  specimen  in  blank- 
verse  of  Bryant's  nature-painting.     His  grave,  didac- 
tic poem,  in   Spenserian  stanzas,  The  Ages,  which  was 
delivered  before  the  Harvard  alumni,  would  make  lit- 
tle impression  in  these  days,  but  nothing  so  good  of 
its  kind  then  had  been  written  in  America,  and  it  is 
marked  by  occasional  fervor  and  touches  of  imagina- 
tion.     The   author's   specific   dignity   of   handling  is 
everywhere  maintained.     "  The  Ages  "  was  printed  at 
Cambridge,  together  with  his  other  poems  then  written, 
in  a  little  book  of  forty-four  pages,  now  excessively 
rare.     The  product  of  his  muse  grew  very  slowly  ;  he 
was  nearing  middle  age  before  there  was  enough  of  it 
to  make  a  collective  edition.     The  London   counter- 
part of  this  was  edited,  with  a  laudatory  preface,  by 
Washington  Irving,  and  gave  the  poet  a  foreign  repu- 
tation.    His  verse  was  received  as  the  metrical  sup- 
plement of  Cooper's  prose,  and  as  confirming  Irving's 
praise  of  its  imaginative  and  thoroughly  national  de- 
lineation of  American  landscape  "  in  its  wild,  solitary, 
and  magnificent  forms."     Small  volumes  of  new  poems 
appeared  in  1840  and  1844,  and  illustrated  editions  of 
Bryant's  poetical  works,  which  foreign  and  native  art- 
ists made  attractive,  were  brought  out  in  Philadelphia 
and  New  York  respectively.     When  he  reached  the  age 
of  threescore  years  and  ten  a  collection  was  made  of 
his  later  poems.     This  embraced  not  a  few  as  sonorous 
and   imaginative    as   "  Thanatopsis "   and  "A   Forest 
Hymn,"  and  lyrics-  in  every  way  equal  to  those  of  his 
youthful  prime  ;  yet,  if  I  remember  rightly,  there  was 
little  sale  for  it,  and  the  chief  profit  which  the  poet  and 


"The 
Ages": 
readbe/ore 
the  *.  B.  K. 
of Har- 
vard, A  ug. 
30,  182 1. 


"  Poems,'' 
182 1. 


"  Poems, 
1832. 


"The 
Fountain, 
and  Other 
Poems," 
.842. 

"The 
IVhiie- 
footed 
Deer,"etc, 
1844. 

Illustrated 
Editions, 
1847,  l85& 
"  Thirty 
Poems," 
1864. 


74 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT. 


No  change 
in  style. 


The  poet's 
life  and  oc- 
cupations. 


Distaste 
for  the 
law. 


Journal- 


his  publishers  received  from  his  metrical  works  came 
through  new  editions,  some  of  which  were  elaborately 
illustrated,  that  were  issued  when  his  conspicuousness 
as  a  personage,  as  a  striking  figure  at  all  civic  and  lit- 
erary gatherings  of  note,  increased  with  his  increasing 
years.  The  Thirty  Poems,  in  fact,  displayed  the  same 
inflexible  restriction  to  an  early  key,  now  quite  out  of 
popular  accord ;  not  a  particle  of  concession,  —  scarcely 
any  consciousness  of  the  radical  changes,  the  advance 
in  diction,  imagery,  variety  of  motive,  and  rhythm,  ef- 
fected by  successive  generations. 

All  this  indicated  a  rigid  and  self-contained  nature, 
but  his  long  absorption  in  the  practical  affairs  of  life 
must  be  taken  into  account.  As  a  youth,  with  slender 
means,  he  started  out  to  make  a  living ;  first,  as  a  law- 
yer in  Berkshire  County.  After  nine  years  at  the  bar, 
he  threw  up  his  profession,  in  view  of  chances  offered 
by  a  growing  literary  reputation,  and  somewhat  out  of 
temper  with  the  chicanery  which  even  then  seemed  in- 
separable from  the  practice  of  the  law,  and  which  in 
any  form  was  repugnant  to  his  life-long  and  Roman 
sense  of  justice.  Yet  in  the  very  traits  we  are  observ- 
ing —  in  diffident  reserve,  apparent  coldness,  real 
warmth  of  feeling  and  personal  tenderness  vouched 
for  by  those  who  knew  him  best,  respect  for  abstract 
truth  and  right,  wrath  vehemently  aroused  by  public 
and  private  wrongs  —  he  was  not  unlike  the  great  ad- 
vocate, Charles  O'Conor,  who  nevertheless  devoted  his 
life  to  enforcing  the  law's  original  claim  to  the  perfec- 
tion of  reason  and  the  majesty  of  power  without  taint. 
Bryant  came  to  New  York  and  entered  upon  journal- 
ism as  the  editor  of  a  literary  magazine,  but  soon 
found  himself  connected  with  the  daily  newspaper  of 
which  he  ultimately  became  the  chief  proprietor  and  ed- 
itor, and  so  remained  until  his  dying  day.     During  the 


NOT  DEVOTED   TO  SONG. 


75 


early  portion  of  this  town-life  he  took  an  active  part, 
that  of  a  leader,  in  what  there  was  of  literary  effort 
and  production,  —  associated  with  Dana,  Halleck, 
Drake,  Verplanck,  Sands,  young  Willis,  and  other 
poets  and  wits  of  the  time.  But  he  became  more  en- 
grossed in  political  and  economic  journalism,  seldom 
yielding  to  the  lyrical  impulse,  and  when  in  age  he 
again  found  leisure  and  desire  for  song,  his  voice  had 
grown  somewhat  alien  to  modern  ears,  although  there 
is  no  sign  that  he  himself  perceived  it.  I  am  speak- 
ing of  his  poetry:  at  intervals  he  wrote  books  of 
travels,  made  up  chiefly  of  letters  to  the  "Evening 
Post,"  besides  many  essays,  addresses,  orations,  which 
were  always  clear  and  adequate,  but  rarely  displaying 
anything  like  genius,  or  striking  in  their  effect. 

It  is  quite  plain   that  he   did   not   give  himself  to 
poetry,  but  added  poetry  to  his  ordinary  life  and  oc- 
cupation.    The   reverse    o£  this,  only,  can   make   the 
greatest  poet.     His  lack  of  devotion  to  a  jealous  mis- 
tress was  the  fault  of  his  time,  and  of  circumstances 
which  decided  his  course  in  life.     To  him  the  parting 
of  the  ways  came  early ;  and  what  was  there  in  our 
literary  atmosphere  and  opportunities,  sixty  years  ago, 
to  make  poetry  the  vocation  of  any  thorough-trained, 
aspiring,  and  resolute   man?     The   nation   called   for 
workers,  journalists,  practical   teachers.     If,   after   ac- 
complishing their  daily  tasks,  they  found  time  to  sing 
a  song,  it  thanked  them,  and  did  little  more.     Poetry 
was  the  surplusage  of  Bryant's  labors,  or,  more  likely, 
their  restoring  complement.     In  all  likelihood  his  med- 
itations would   not  have  been  expressed  in  song  but 
for  the  influence  of  those  early  readings,  under  a  dis- 
cerning father's  care.     Otherwise,  though  he  could  not 
have  failed  to  become  a  writer,  as  a  poet  he  might  have 
been  one  of  the  mute  oracles  whose  lot  is  mourned  by 
Wordsworth  :  — 


Absorp- 
tion in  this 
Profession. 


"  Letters 
of  a  Trav- 
eller" and 
similar 
prose 
works, 
1850-69. 

"  Orations 
and  A  d- 
dresses," 

873;  and 
see  his 
"■Life  and 

Works," 
by  God- 
win, 1883. 

Poetry  lit- 
tle more 
than  his 
avocation. 

Cp.  "  Vic- 
torian 
Poets": 
PP.  Si,  82. 


76 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT. 


Absolute 
sincerity. 


Effect  of 
early  stud- 
ies on  lit- 
erary dic- 


—  "  men  endowed  with  highest  gifts, 
The  vision  and  the  faculty  divine ; 
Yet  wanting  the  accomplishment  of  verse, 
Which,  in  the  docile  season  of  their  youth, 
It  was  denied  them  to  acquire." 

But  read  "The  Evening  Wind,"  see  him  in  his  most 
spontaneous  mood,  and  you  feel  that,  once  having 
learned  the  art  of  verse,  the  poet  within  him  thereafter 
must  break  out  from  time  to  time.  He  did  not  hoard 
his  reputation.  But  his  passion  and  tenderness  did 
not  so  readily  force  him  to  metrical  expression  as  a 
feebler  amount  of  either  has  forced  many  a  weak  but 
more  facile  singer  trained  in  a  less  rude  and  inartistic 
age. 

On  the  other  hand,  he  never,  by  any  chance,  affected 
passion  or  set  himself  to  artificial  song.  He  had  the 
triple  gift  of  Athene,  "  self-reverence,  self-knowledge, 
self-control."  He  was  incapable  of  pretending  to  rap- 
ture that  he  did  not  feel,  and  this  places  him  far  above 
a  host  of  those  who,  without  knowing  it,  hunt  for  emo- 
tions and  make  poetry  little  better  than  a  trade.  As 
for  his  diction,  he  began  when  there  was  no  Feast  of 
Pentecost  with  its  gift  of  tongues.  I  think  that  the 
available  portion  of  a  poet's  vocabulary  is  that  which 
he  acquires  in  youth,  during  his  formative  period.  It 
is  easier  for  an  adult  to  learn  a  foreign  language  than 
to  enlarge  greatly  his  native  range  of  words,  and  have 
them  at  every-day  command.  Bryant's  early  reading 
was  before  the  great  revival  which  brought  into  use  the 
romance-words  of  Chaucer,  Spenser,  and  the  Eliza- 
bethan age.  It  was  derived  from  the  poorest,  if  the 
smoothest,  English  period  —  that  which  began  with 
Pope  and  ended  with  Cowper.  The  rich  advantage 
of  a  modern  equipment  is  visible  in  Tennyson,  who 
had  Keats  and  Shelley  for  his  predecessors;   not   to 


DORIC  SIMPLICITY. 


77 


consider  Swinburne,  who,  above  his  supernatural  gifts 
of  rhythm  and  language,  owes  much  to  youthful  explo- 
rations in  classic  and  Continental  tongues.  No  doubt 
Bryant's  models  confirmed  his  natural  restrictions  of 
speech.  But  even  this  narrow  verbal  range  has  made 
his  poetry  strong  and  pure ;  and  now,  when  expression 
has  been  carried  to  its  extreme,  it  is  an  occasional  re- 
lief to  recur  to  the  clearness,  to  the  exact  appreciation 
of  words,  discoverable  in  every  portion  of  his  verse 
and  prose.  It  is  like  a  return  from  a  florid  renaissance 
to  the  antique  ;  and  indeed  there  was  something  Doric 
in  Bryant's  nature.  His  diction,  like  his  thought,  often 
refreshes  us  as  the  shadow  of  a  great  rock  in  a  weary 
land.  He  refused  to  depart  from  what  seemed  to  him 
the  natural  order  of  English  verse,  —  that  order  which 
comes  to  the  lips  of  childhood,  and  is  not  foreign  to 
any  life  or  age.  The  thought  was  like  the  measure, 
that  which  was  old  with  the  fathers  and  is  young  in 
our  own  time,  the  pure  philosophy  of  nature's  lessons. 
Give  his  poems  a  study,  and  their  simplicity  is  their 
charm.  How  easy  it  seems  to  write  those  natural 
lines !  Yet  it  is  harder  than  to  catch  a  hundred  fan- 
tastic touches  of  word-painting  and  dexterous  sound. 
He  never  was  obscure,  because  he  dared  not  and  would 
not  go  beyond  his  proper  sight  and  knowledge,  and 
this  was  the  safeguard  of  his  poetry,  his  prose,  and  his 
almost  blameless  life, 

Verse,  to  Bryant,  was  the  outflow  of  his  deepest 
emotions ;  a  severe  taste  and  discreet  temperament 
made  him  avoid  the  study  of  decoration.  Thus  he  was 
always  direct  and  intelligible,  and  appealed  to  the  com- 
mon people  as  strongly  as  to  the  select  few.  I  have 
compared  him  to  our  stately  men  of  an  older  time. 
Among  others  Daniel  Webster  might  be  mentioned  as 
one  whose  mood  and  rhetoric  are  in  keeping  with  the 


78 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT. 


Bryant's 
favorite 
measures. 


The  iam- 
bic quat- 
rain. 


poetry  of  Bryant.  Like  Webster,  our  poet  always  se- 
lected the  leading,  impressive  thought,  and  brushed  the 
rest  aside.  This  he  put  in  with  a  firm  and  glowing 
touch.  Many  have  thought  the  works  of  both  the 
statesman  and  the  poet  conventional,  but  the  adjective 
might  be  brought  to  apply  to  all  simple  and  essential 
truth  and  diction.  Adopting  Arnold's  distinction,  we 
see  that  Bryant's  simplicity  was  not  simplesse,  but 
simplicite.  Everett  made  a  good  presentation  of  its 
strongest  claim  when  he  said  that  poetry,  at  its  best,  is 
"  easily  intelligible,  touching  the  finest  chords  of  taste 
and  feeling,  but  never  striving  at  effect.  This  is  the 
highest  merit  in  every  department  of  literature,  and 
in  poetry  it  is  well  called  inspiration.  Surprise,  con- 
ceit, strange  combinations  of  imagery  and  expression, 
may  be  successfully  managed,  but  it  is  merit  of  an 
inferior  kind.  The  beautiful,  pathetic,  and  sublime 
are  always  simple  and  natural,  and  marked  by  a  cer- 
tain serene  unconsciousness  of  effort."  "This,"  he 
added,  "  is  the  character  of  Mr.  Bryant's  poetry." 


Let  us  again,  then,  observe  its  forms  and  themes, 
and  discover  clues  to  the  quality  of  the  genius  which 
idealized  them.  Bryant's  chosen  measures  were  few 
and  simple.  Two  were  special  favorites,  most  fre- 
quently used  for  his  pictures  of  nature  and  his  medi- 
tations on  the  soul  of  things,  and  in  their  use  he  was 
a  master. 

One  was  the  iambic  quatrain,  in  octosyllabic  verse, 
of  which  the  familiar  stanza,  "  Truth  crushed  to  earth 
will  rise  again,"  may  be  recalled  as  a  specimen.  Many 
of  his  best  modern  pieces  are  composed  in  this  meas- 
ure, so   evenly  and  firmly  that  the    slightest    change 


HIS  BLANK-VERSE. 


79 


would  mar  their  sound  and  flow.  "  A  Day  Dream," 
written  in  the  poet's  old  age,  is  perfect  of  its  kind, 
and  may  rank  almost  with  Collins's  nonpareil,  "To 
fair  Fidele's  Grassy  Tomb."  Witness  such  stanzas  as 
these :  — 

I  sat  and  watched  the  eternal  flow 

Of  those  smooth  billows  toward  the  shore, 
While  quivering  lines  of  light  below 
Ran  with  them  on  the  ocean  floor." 


"  Then  moved  their  coral  lips ;  a  strain 
Low,  sweet  and  sorrowful,  I  heard, 
As  if  the  murmurs  of  the  main 

Were  shaped  to  syllable  and  word." 

His  variations  upon  the  iambic  quatrain,  as  in  the 
celebrated  poems,  "  To  a  Waterfowl  "  and  "  The  Past," 
are  equally  successful.  The  second  of  the  forms  re- 
ferred to  is  that  blank-verse  in  which  his  supremacy 
always  was  recognized.  Among  the  distinct  phases 
of  our  grandest  English  measure  that  have  been  ob- 
served in  literature,  Bryant's  may  be  classed  with  the 
Reflective,  of  which  Wordsworth,  succeeding  the  di- 
dacticians,  held  unquestioned  control,  but  from  the 
outset  it  was  marked  by  a  quality  plainly  his  own. 
The  essence  of  its  cadence,  pauses,  rhythm,  should  be 
termed  American,  and  it  is  the  best  ever  written  in  the 
New  World.  Blank-verse  is  the  easiest  and  the  most 
difficult  of  all  measures  j  the  poorest  in  poor  hands ; 
the  finest  when  written  by  a  true  poet.  Whoever 
essays  it  is  a  poet  disrobed  ;  he  must  rely  upon  his 
natural  gifts  ;  his  defects  cannot  be  hidden.  In  this 
measure  Bryant  was  at  his  height,  and  he  owes  to  it  the 
most  enduring  portion  of  his  fame.  However  narrow 
his  range,  we  must  own  that  he  was  first  in  the  first. 
He  reached  the  upper  air  at  once  in  "  Thanatopsis," 
and  again  and  again,  though  none  too  frequently,  he 


8o 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT. 


A  pano- 
ramic se- 
ries. 


Lofty  con- 
templative 
poems. 


renewed  his  flights,  and,  like  his  own  waterfowl,  pur- 
sued his  "solitary  way." 

The  finest  and  most  sustained  of  his  poems  of  na- 
ture are  those  written  in  blank-verse.  At  intervals  so 
rare  throughout  his  life  as  to  resemble  the  seven-year 
harvests,  or  the  occasional  wave  that  overtops  the  rest, 
he  composed  a  series  of  those  pieces  which  now  form 
a  unique  panorama  of  nature's  aspects,  moving  to  the 
music  of  lofty  thoughts  and  melodious  words.  Such 
are  "  A  Winter  Piece,"  the  "  Inscription  for  the  En- 
trance to  a  Wood,"  "A  Forest  Hymn,"  "Summer 
Wind,"  "The  Prairies,"  "The  Fountain,"  "  A  Hymn 
of  the  Sea,"  "  A  Rain-Dream  " ;  also  a  few  written 
late  in  life,  showing  that  the  eye  of  the  author  of 
"  Thanatopsis "  had  not  been  dimmed,  nor  was  his 
natural  force  abated  :  these  are  "  The  Constellations," 
"The  River,  by  Night,"  and  "Among  the  Trees." 
In  all  the  treatment  is  large  and  ennobling,  and  dis- 
tinctly marks  each  as  Bryant's.  The  method,  that  of 
invocation,  somewhat  resembles  the  manner  of  Col- 
eridge's Hymn  in  the  Vale  of  Chamouni.  When  in  a 
less  enraptured  strain,  they  exhibit  repose,  feeling,  wise 
and  reverent  thought. 

In  the  same  eloquent  verse,  and  with  like  caesural 
pauses  and  inflections,  we  find  his  more  purely  medi- 
tative poems,  upon  an  equal  or  still  higher  plane 
of  feeling,— "Thanatopsis,"  the  "Hymn  to  Death," 
"  Earth,"  "  An  Evening  Revery,"  "  The  Antiquity  of 
Freedom,"  and  one  of  his  latest  and  longest,  "The 
Flood  of  Years."  Yet,  in  both  his  reflective  verse 
and  that  devoted  to  nature,  he  often  employed  lyrical 
measures  with  equal  excellence  j  as  in  the  breezy, 
exquisite  poem  on  "Life,"  "  The  Battle  Field,"  "The 
Future  Life,"  and  "The  Conqueror's  Grave,"  — the 
latter  one  of  his  most  elevating  pieces.      Especially 


AN  ELEMENTAL  IMAGINATION. 


8l 


in  his  lyrics  he  seemed  like  a  wind-harp  yielding  ten- 
der music  in  response  to  every  suggestion  of  the  great 
Mother  whom  he  loved.  Such  poems  as  "June," 
"The  Death  of  the  Flowers,"  and  "The  Evening 
Wind  "  show  this,  and  also  indicate  the  limits  within 
which  his  song  was  spontaneous.  Each  is  the  gen- 
uine expression  of  a  personal  mood,  and  has  by  this 
merit  taken  its  place  in  metrical  literature. 

At  last,  then,  we  are  brought  to  a  recognition  of  the 
power  in  Bryant's  verse  which  has  given  him  a  station 
above  that  which  he  could  hope  to  win  by  its  amount 
or  range.     It  is  the  elemental  quality  of  his  song.     Like 
the  bards  of  old,  his  spirit  delights  in  fire,  air,  earth, 
and   water,  — the    apparent    structures   of    the    starry 
heavens,  the  mountain  recesses,   and  the  vasty  deep. 
These  he  apostrophizes,  but  over  them  and  within  them 
he  discerns  and  bows  the  knee  to  the  omniscience  of 
a  protecting  Father,  a  creative  God.     Poets,  eminent 
in  this  wise,  have  been  gifted  always  with  imagination. 
The  verse  of  Bryant  often  is  full  of  high  imaginings. 
Select  any  portion  of   "  Thanatopsis  "  :  — 
"Pierce  the  Barcan  wilderness, 
Or  lose  thyself  in  the  continuous  woods 
Where  rolls  the  Oregon,  and  hears  no  sound 
Save  his  own  dashings  — yet  the  dead  are  there!" 

or  this,  from  "The  Prairies":—  » 

"The  bee 


A  bard  of 
the  ele- 
ments. 


Fills  the  savannas  with  his  murmunngs, 
And  hides  his  sweets,  as  in  the  golden  age, 
Within  the  hollow  oak.     I  listen  long 
To  his  domestic  hum,  and  think  I  hear 
The  sound  of  that  advancing  multitude 
Which  soon  shall  fill  these  deserts.     From  the  ground 
Comes  up  the  laugh  of  children,  the  soft  voice 
Of  maidens,  and  the  sweet  and  solemn  hymn 
6 


Imagina- 
tion. 


82 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT. 


His 

" hand on 
Nature's 
keys:* 


Of  Sabbath  worshippers.     The  low  of  herds 
Blends  with  the  rustling  of  the  heavy  grain 
Over  the  dark-brown  furrows.     All  at  once 
A  fresher  wind  sweeps  by  and  breaks  my  dream, 
And  I  am  in  the  wilderness  alone." 


Read  the  entire  poem  of  "Earth.5 
zas  as  this,  from  "The  Past":  — 


Take  such  stan- 


"Far  in  thy  realm  withdrawn 
Old  empires  sit  in  sullenness  and  gloom, 

And  glorious  ages  gone 
Lie  deep  within  the  shadow  of  thy  womb  "  ; 

such  phrases  as, 

"  Old  Ocean's  gray  and  melancholy  waste  " ; 

or,  from  "A  Rain-Dream,"  an  impersonation  of 

"the  Wind  of  night, 
A  lonely  wanderer  between  earth  and  cloud, 
In  the  black  shadow  and  the  chilly  mist, 
Along  the  streaming  mountain-side,  and  through 
The  dripping  woods,  and  o'er  the  plashy  fields, 
Roaming  and  sorrowing  still,  like  one  who  makes 
The  journey  of  life  alone,  and  nowhere  meets 
A  welcome  or  a  friend,  and  still  goes  on 
In  darkness." 

Take  passages  like  these,  —  and  they  are  not  infre- 
quent in  Bryant's  poetry,  —  make  allowance  for  the 
law  byt  which  any  real  poet's  work  is  sure  to  grow 
upon  us  in  close  examination,  and  we  still  are  con- 
fronted with  an  "  elemental "  imagination  often  higher 
than  that  of  more  productive  poets.  Modern  singers 
excel  in  richness  of  phrase,  redundant  imagery,  elab- 
orate word-painting ;  but  every  period  has  its  fore- 
runners and  masters,  and  our  rising  men  must  ac- 
knowledge Bryant  as  a  laurelled  master  of  the  early 
American  School.  He  seldom  touched  the  keys,  yet 
they  gave  out  an  organ  tone. 


TRANSLATION  OF  HOMER. 


83 


Indeed,  when  he  essayed  piano-music,  and  was  in 
a  light  or  fanciful  mood,  he  was  unable  to  vie  with 
sprightlier  and  defter  hands.  His  lyrics,  in  swift  and 
simple  measures,  had  a  ringing  quality,  noticeable  in 
the  "  Song  of  Marion's  Men,"  the  best  of  them,  and  in 
"The  Hunter  of  the  Prairies."  A  pleasant  surprise 
awaits  us  in  certain  later  pieces,  such  as  "  The  Plant- 
ing of  the  Apple-Tree,"  the  delicate  "  Snow-Shower," 
and  "  Robert  of  Lincoln,"  —  so  full  of  bird-music  and 
fancy.  Usually  it  was  with  an  air  of  uncouthness  and 
doubt  that  he  ventured  beyond  established  precedents, 
as  if  he  were  in  strange  waters  and  would  gladly  touch 
firm  land;  but  then,  he  seldom  ventured.  As  he 
grew  older,  beyond  the  asperities  of  life,  he  became 
less  brooding,  sad,  and  grave.  His  Fancy,  what  there 
was  of  it,  came  in  his  later  years,  and  suggested  two 
of  his  longest  pieces,  "  Sella"  and  "The  Little  People 
of  the  Snow,"  tales  of  folk-lore,  in  which  his  lighter 
and  more  graceful  handling  of  blank-verse  may  be 
studied  without  fatigue. 

VI. 

A  shrewd  confidence  in  his  own  mental  and  bodily 
strength  was  justified  by  the  execution,  in  his  old  age, 
of  that  monumental  task,  —  a  full  translation  of  the 
epics  of  Homer.  Such  labor  undoubtedly  is  adapted 
to  the  afternoon  of  life,  when  creative  energy  is  spent 
and  the  discretionary  faculties  are  trained  to  their  ex- 
treme ;  still,  the  completed  evidence  of  Bryant's  vigor, 
even  at  life's  sunset,  is  hardly  less  notable  than  Lan- 
dor's  retention  of  ideality  to  his  ninetieth  year. 

After  the  manner  of  De  Senectute,  one  well  might 
recommend  this  special  labor  to  a  poet  of  Bryant's 
cast,  as  the  solace  of  his  advancing  age.     There  was 


Slight  lyr- 
ical/acui- 
ty. 


84 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT. 


How  far 
Bryant's 
work  may 
be  com- 
mended. 


The  de- 
scriptive 
passages. 

Od.  V., 
43-74- 


something  in  the  old  bard  himself  which  his  admirers 
called  Homeric  \  and  there  were  these  traits,  at  least, 
common  to  the  genius  of  the  epics  and  that  of  their 
translator,  —  a  primitive  way  of  regarding  things,  a 
stately  utterance,  a  vision  clear  and  suited  to  the 
theme.  The  best  characteristics  of  Bryant's  The  Iliad 
and  The  Odyssey  are  :  (i),  general,  though  not  invaria- 
ble, fidelity  to  the  text,  as  compared  with  former  ver- 
sions by  poets  of  equal  rank ;  (2),  simplicity  of  phrase 
and  style;  (3),  approximate  transfusion  of  the  heroic 
spirit ;  (4),  a  purity  of  language  that  pleases  a  sensible 
reader.  It  is  not  likely  that  Bryant  possessed  a  schol- 
ar's mastery  of  even  the  familiar  Ionic  Greek,  but  the 
text  of  Homer  long  has  been  substantially  agreed  upon 
by  European  editors,  there  are  special  lexicons  devoted 
to  it,  and  it  is  faithfully  rendered  in  German  and  Eng- 
lish translations:  so  that  the  poet  could  have  little 
trouble  in  adjusting  it  to  his  metrical  needs.  His 
choice  of  words  is  meagre,  and  so  —  in  a  modern  sense 
—  was  that  of  Homer ;  there  is  no  lack  of  minstrels, 
nowadays,  who  ransack  their  vocabularies  to  fill  our 
jaded  ears  with  "words,  words,  words."  As  a  pre- 
sentment of  standard  English  the  value  of  these  trans- 
lations is  beyond  serious  cavil.  When  they  are  com- 
pared with  the  most  faithful  and  poetic  blank-verse 
rendering  which  preceded  them,  the  work  of  Cowper, 
they  show  an  advance  in  both  accuracy  and  poetic 
quality.  Lord  Derby's  contemporaneous  version  is 
dull  and  inferior.  Bryant  naturally  handled  to  best 
advantage  his  descriptive  passages,  —  the  verses  in  the 
Fifth  Odyssey,  which  narrate  the  visit  of  Hermes  to 
Calypso,  furnishing  a  case  in  point.  His  rendering  of 
these  is  more  literal  than  the  favorite  transcript  by 
Leigh  Hunt,  and  excels  all  others  in  ease  and  choice 
of  language.     The  following  extract  from  another  pas- 


IDIOMATIC  STYLE. 


85 


sage  will  show  how  well  he  occasionally  substitutes,  for 
the  Greek  color  and  rising  harmony,  the  gloom  and 
vigor  of  our  Saxon  tongue  :  — 

"  The  steady  wind 
Swelled  out  the  canvas  in  the  midst;  the  ship 
Moved  on,  the  dark  sea  roaring  round  her  keel, 
As  swiftly  through  the  waves  she  cleft  her  way. 
And  when  the  rigging  of  that  swift  black  ship 
Was  firmly  in  its  place,  they  filled  their  cups 
With  wine,  and  to  the  ever-living  gods 
Poured  out  libations,  most  of  all  to  one, 
Jove's  blue-eyed  daughter.    Thus  through  all  that  night 
And  all  the  ensuing  morn  they  held  their  way." 
Very  often,  in  fact,  where  the  original  text  is  high- 
sounding  and    polysyllabic,   he   obtains    his    English 
effect  by  reliance  upon  the  strength  of   monosyllabic 
words : — 

"  For  his  is  the  black  doom  of  death,  ordained 
By  the  great  gods." 

"  Hear  me  yet  more  : 
When  she  shall  smite  thee  with  her  wand,  draw  forth 
Thy  good  sword  from  thy  thigh  and  rush  at  her 
As  if  to  take  her  life,  and  she  will  crouch 

In  fear." 

"  I  hate 
To  tell  again  a  tale  once  fully  told." 

But  occasionally  he  uses   to   advantage  the  Latinism 
peculiar  to  his  reflective  poems.     Such  lines  as  Shake- 
speare's .  ,.     „ 
"The  multitudinous  seas  incarnadine 

show  by  what  process  the  twin  forces  of  our  language 
are  fully  brought  in  play.  Verses  of  this  sort,  formed 
by  the  juxtaposition  of  the  numerous  Greek  particles 
with  ringing  derivative  and  compound  words,  make  up 
a  good  deal  of  the  Homeric  song.  Bryant  accordingly 
varied  his  translation  with  lines  which  remind  us  of 
" Thanatopsis  "  or  "A  Forest  Hymn":  — 


Od.11. 
4*7-434- 


Style  and 
language. 


86 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT. 


The  meas- 
ure chosen 
for  this 
transla- 
tion. 


"The  innumerable  nations  of  the  dead." 

"That  strength  and  these  unconquerable  hands." 

"And  downward  plunged  the  unmanageable  rock." 

His  paraphrases  of  the  Greek  idioms  are  noticeable  for 
English  idiomatic  purity,  so  much  so  that  the  idea  of 
a  translation  frequently  absents  itself  from  the  reader's 
mind.     While  in  one  respect  this  is  the  perfection  of 
such  work,  in  another  it  is  the  loss  of  that  charm  per- 
taining to  the  sense  of  all  rare  things  which  are  foreign 
to  our  own  mode  and  period.     His  restraint,  also,  is 
carried  to  the  verge  of  sterility  by  the  repetition   of 
certain  adjectives  as  the  equivalents  of   Greek  words 
varying   among  themselves.      The   words    "  glorious " 
and  "  sagacious,"  for  example,  not  uncommon  in  this 
translation,  do  not  always  represent  the  same,  or  even 
synonymous,   expressions   in   the    original    text.      But 
some   of  his   epithets   and   renderings,  such   as   "the 
large-souled  Ulysses,"   "the   unfruitful  sea,"    "passed 
into  the  Underworld,"  and  his  retention  of  Cowper's 
paraphrase  of  yepwv  aXtos,  "  the  Ancient  of  the  Deep," 
give  a  more  elevated  and  poetical  tone  to  the  work. 
It  must  be  acknowledged  that  these  translations,  ex- 
ecuted without  haste  or  rest  during  eight  years  of  an 
old  man's  life,  are  not  without  dignity  and  value.     The 
question  is  debatable  whether  there  was  any  real  need 
of  a  new  rendering  of  Homer  into  our  rhymeless  iam- 
bic pentameter.     If  so,  did  Mr.  Bryant's  labors  fill  the 
void  ?     It  was  proper  and  natural  that  he  should  make 
blank-verse  the  vehicle  for  his  use,  as  the  one  above 
all  others  in  which  he  was  sure  to  reach  a  measure 
of  success.      And  had  Tennyson  undertaken  the  full 
translation  of   Homer,  after  the  manner  indicated  by 
that  magnificent   early  production,  the   "Morte  d'Ar- 
thur,"  something  very  fine  would   have   been   the  re* 


THE  VERSE  EMPLOYED. 


suit.     Bryant's  verse  is  noticeably  different 

of  Tennyson.     Only  in  an  occasional  passage,  li 

following,  the  one  reminds  us  of  the  other:  — 

"  The  formidable  baldric,  on  whose  band 
Of  gold  were  sculptured  marvels, — forms  of  bears, 
Wild  boars,  grim  lions,  battles,  skirmishings, 
And  death  by  wounds,  and  slaughter." 

Yet  in  every  blank -verse  rendering  there  is  an  in- 
efficacy,  —  least  felt,  perhaps,  in  those  elevated  pas- 
sages, the  fiery  glow  of  which  for  a  time  lifts  us 
above  contemplation  of  the  translator's  art.  In  the 
more  mechanical  portions  blank -verse  cannot  of  it- 
self, by  the  music  and  flexibility  of  its  structure,  have 
the  converse  effect  of  holding  us  above  the  level  of 
the  theme.  Here  the  deficiency  is  painful ;  and  for 
this  reason,  amongst  others,  that  in  Greek  the  names 
of  the  most  common  objects  are  imposing  and  me- 
lodious. Those  lines  whose  poverty  of  thought  is 
greatest,  upborne  by  the  long  roll  of  the  hexameter, 
have  a  quality  as  aristocratic  as  the  grace  and  dig- 
nity of  a  Spanish  beggar.  A  translator  discovers  the 
weakness  of  blank -verse  in  those  intercalary  lines 
which  are  such  a  feature  in  Homer,  and  which  consti- 
tute a  kind  of  refrain,  affording  rest  at  intervals  along 
the  torrent  of  the  song.  In  the  best  lyric  and  epic 
poetry  of  all  nations  a  disdain  of  minor  changes  is 
observable;  but  Bryant,  seeing  that  blank-verse  does 
little  honor  to  a  purely  mechanical  office,  often  varied 
his  translations  of  such  lines,  instead  of  following 
the  Homeric  method  of  recurrence  to  one  chosen 
form.  The  very  directness  of  his  syntax,  leading 
to  the  rejection,  even,  of  such  inversions  as  Tenny- 
son's 

"To  whom  replied  King  Arthur,  much  in  wrath" 


Ineffi- 
cacy  of 
blank- 
verse. 


Prosaic 

lapses. 


88 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT. 


Lack  of 
movement. 


Cp.  "  Vic- 
torian 
Poets"'1: 
f.  x66. 


made   it  almost  prosaic  in   this  respect.      Such  lines 

as 

"  Telemachus,  the  prudent,  thus  rejoined  " 
"  And  then  discreet  Telemachus  replied  " 
"  Ulysses,  the  sagacious,  answered  her " 

are  tame  substitutes  for  the  courtly  and  sonorous  in- 
terludes, 

TV  8'  ad  Tr)\e/xaxos  ireiri/vfjLevos  avriov  rji/Sw 

TV  y  airafieifi6/j.€vos  irpoa£<pt\  voXtfnjTis  'OSuffaets  • 

We  feel  still  more  the  shortcomings  of  blank-verse  in 
the  paraphrases  of  those  resonant  dactylic  lines,  which 
make  up  so  large  a  portion  of  the  Iliad  and  Odys- 
sey, and  give  splendor  to  the  movement  of  whole 
cantos.  We  might  cite  innumerable  examples,  like 
the  following:  — 

"^Hfjios  5'  rjpiyeveia  <p<Lv-q  ^o5oSa.Krv\os  'Hc&s. 

"  But  when  the  Morn, 
The  rosy-fingered  child  of  Dawn,  looked  forth." 

Ai)Tap  iird  iroTafwio  \iirev  p6ov  'Q,K€avo?o 
NrjOy,  airb  8'  ?k€to  Kvfia  OaKdcrays  evpvirSpoio. 

"Now  when  our  bark  had  left  Oceanus 
And  entered  the  great  deep." 

All  this  points  to  the  one  deficiency  in  a  blank- 
verse  translation,  and  this,  unquestionably,  relates  to 
the  movement  Can  a  version  in  our  slow  and  stately 
iambics,  which  are  perfectly  adequate  to  represent 
the  dialogue  of  the  Greek  dramas,  approximate  to 
the  rhythmic  effect  of  a  measure  which  originally  was 
chanted  or  intoned?  The  rush  of  epic  song  has 
been  caught  by  Chapman,  in  his  "  Iliads,"  and  to 
some  extent  by  Pope  and  others,  at  the  expense  of 
matter  and  style.  But  only  in  one  instance,  that  I 
now  recall,  has  modern  blank-verse  attained  to  any- 
thing   like    the   Homeric    swiftness.     I   refer    to   the 


'ENGLISH  HEXAMETER: 


89 


tournament  scene,  which  closes  the  fifth  book  of 
"The  Princess."  Even  the  splendid  movement  of 
this  passage  is  unrestful,  and  like  the  fierce  spurt 
of  a  racer  that  can  win  by  a  dash,  but  has  not  the 
bottom  needed  for  a  three-mile  heat. 

To  the  present  date  I  know  of  no  metrical  version 
of  Greek  hexameter  text,  epic  or  idyllic  (unless  in 
brief  experiments  like  one  or  two  of  Dean  Haw- 
trey's),  that  can  vie  in  beauty  and  fidelity  with  the 
prose  rendering  of  Homer  by  Butcher  and  Lang,  and 
with  Mr.  Lang's  exquisite  translation  of  Theocritus, 
Bion,  and  Moschus. 

There  are   two  of   our  metrical   forms  in  which,   I 
think,   the    Homeric   rhythmus   may   be   more   nearly 
approached   than    by   the   means   of    blank-verse.     A 
good  objection  has  been  made  to  the  rhymed  heroic 
measure,    as    used    by   Pope    (and  by  Dryden   in  his 
Virgil),  that  it  disturbs   the  force  of  the  original  by 
connecting  thoughts  not  meant  to  be  connected ;  that 
it  causes  a  "  balancing  of  expression  in  the  two  lines 
of  which   it  consists,  which  is  wholly  foreign   to   the 
Homeric  style."     Professor  Hadley  suggested  that  this 
might  be  obviated  by  a  return  to  the  measure  as  writ- 
ten by  Chaucer,  not  pausing  too  often  at  the  rhymes, 
but   frequently  running   the   sentences  over,  with   the 
caesura  varied  as  in  blank-verse.     This  usage,  in  fact, 
was  revived  by  Keats  and  Leigh  Hunt,  and  is  nota- 
ble   in    William    Morris's    flowing    poetry,   to   which 
Hadley  referred  for  illustration.     Chapman  translated 
the  Odyssey  upon  this  plan,  but  in  a  slovenly  fashion, 
not   to   be   compared  with  his   other  Homeric   work. 
There    is    room,    perhaps,   for   a    new   translation   of 
Homer  into  the  rhymed  Chaucerian  verse.     The  mer- 
its  of   the  so-called  "  English  hexameter "  were   long 
ago   so  clearly  set  forth  by   Mr.    Arnold,   the   main 


Recent 
prose 
transla- 
tions. 


A  vailabU 
forms  of 
verse. 


The 

rhymed 

iambic 

pentatnr 

ter. 


The 

"  English 
hexame- 
ter." 


9Q 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT. 


See  "  No. 
Am.  Rev.'' 
CXII. 
328. 


A  test. 


Cp.  "Vic- 
torian 
Poets": 
p.  251. 


See  Chap. 
VI. 


points  of  whose  argument  seem  to  me  irrefutable,  that 
I  shall  write  at  no  great  length  upon  it  here.  Pro- 
fessor C.  T.  Lewis,  in  his  brilliant  review  of  Bry- 
ant's Homer,  after  justly  stating  that  our  hexameter 
verse  could  not  be  written  classically,  says  that  it  is 
peculiar  among  English  metres,  because  it  is  so  very 
like  prose.  It  is  less  metrical  than  any  form  of  Eng- 
lish verse.  "Blank-verse,"  he  adds,  "can  stoop  to  the 
simplest  speech  without  approaching  prose."  True, 
but  it  does  not  always  do  so.  Run  together  the 
opening  lines  of  Bryant's  Odyssey,  which  in  Greek 
are  made  highly  poetical  by  the  structure  and  sound, 
and  see  if  they  have  not  a  prosaic  effect :  — 

"Tell  me,  O  Muse,  of  that  sagacious  man  who, 
having  overthrown  the  sacred  town  of  Ilium,  wan- 
dered far  and  visited  the  capitals  of  many  nations, 
learned  the  customs  of  their  dwellers,  and  endured 
great  suffering  on  the  deep." 

Now  where,  in  Mr.  Kingsley's  "  Andromeda,"  — 
a  fair  specimen  of  English  hexameter,  with  liquid 
cadences  throughout,  —  can  five  lines  be  made  to 
read  like  that  ?  In  a  future  chapter,  when  we  come 
to  Longfellow's  "  Evangeline,"  it  may  be  worth  while 
to  consider  the  features  that  this  measure  is  likely  to 
assume.  No  master  has  brought  it  to  the  perfection 
which  attracts  both  scholars  and  laymen  ;  yet  I  am 
confident  that  we  shall  have  an  English  verse  of  six 
feet,  with  the  billowy  roll  of  the  classical  hexameter, 
and  that  by  its  form  it  will  be  suited  to  the  repro- 
duction of  Homer,  line  for  line.  If  Bayard  Taylor, 
who,  by  argument  and  practice,  demonstrated  the 
value  of  Form  to  the  translator's  work,  could  reach 
so  near  his  mark  in  rendering  the  hundred  metres 
of  "Faust,"  surely  there  is  encouragement  for  a 
future  attempt  to  represent  more  closely  the  one  de- 


A   DEFENDER  OF  LIBERTY. 


91 


fiant  measure  of  heroic  song.  To  the  point  made 
that  English  is  too  consonantal  for  such  representa- 
tion, we  reply  that  it  is  no  more  consonantal  in  hex- 
ameter than  in  pentameter  verse,  and  that,  of  the  two 
kinds,  the  former  is  nearer  to  the  verse  of  Homer. 
This  objection  would  apply  more  forcibly  to  the  still 
harsher  German ;  yet  we  conceive  Voss's  Iliad  to  have 
given  German  readers  a  truer  idea  of  the  original 
than  any  English  translation  has  conveyed  to  our- 
selves. 

In  a  review  of  Bryant's  Odyssey,  at  the  date  of  its 
completion,  I  criticised  his  employment  of  those  Ro- 
man names  by  which  the  deities  of  Grecian  mythol- 
ogy have  been  familiarly  known.  It  was  a  failure  to 
realize  the  advances  in  taste  and  learning  even  then 
nearly  popularized  by  Grote,  Tennyson,  the  Brownings, 
Swinburne,  and  by  younger  poets  and  scholars  with- 
out end.  If  Lord  Derby  in  England,  and  Mr.  Bryant 
in  America,  had  adopted  the  true  nomenclature,  the 
transition  speedily  would  have  been  complete.  But 
the  order  of  our  poet's  mind,  even  in  its  epic  mood, 
was  slow  and  stately,  Latin  rather  than  Grecian. 
Hence,  as  a  translator  from  the  Spanish  he  was  suc- 
cessful, reproducing  the  calm  and  royal  quality  of 
Castilian  song. 

VII. 

American  poets  have  been  true  to  their  own  land 
in  expressing  its  innate  freedom,  patriotism,  aspiring 
resolve.  Throughout  Bryant's  life  his  scattered. poems 
upon  political  events,  at  home  and  abroad,  have  been 
consecrated  to  freedom  and  its  devotees.  He  breathed 
a  spirit  of  independence  with  the  wind  of  his  native 
hills.  The  country  is  the  open  wild  of  liberty.  All 
our  poets  of  nature  are  poets  of  human  rights.     Should 


See  "The 
Atlantic 
Monthly," 
May,  1872. 


Poets  of 
freedom. 


92 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT. 


Bryant's 
poem  on 
the  E -man- 
cipation. 


America  ever  become  monarchical  it  will  be  due  to 
the  influence  of  cities  and  those  bred  in  them.  Bry- 
ant's regard  for  law,  for  the  inheritance  of  just  polit- 
ical and  social  systems,  was  unquestionable.  He  might 
have  been  a  constitutionalist  in  France  ;  here,  though 
bred  a  Federalist,  he  was  sure  to  oppose  undue  cen- 
tralization. After  all,  he  was  of  no  party  further  than 
he  conceived  it  to  be  right.  Witness  his  contest  with 
slavery  and  his  desertion  of  a  Democracy  which  finally, 
he  thought,  belied  its  name.  That  he  did  not,  with 
Lowell  and  Whittier,  summon  his  muse  to  oppose  the 
greatest  wrong  of  our  history  was  owing  to  two  causes  : 
First,  it  was  his  lyrical  habit  to  observe  and  idealize 
general  principles,  the  abstract  rather  than  the  con- 
crete. Whittier's  poems  are  alive  with  incident,  and 
burn  with  personal  feeling.  Once,  only,  Bryant  wrote 
a  mighty  poem  on  Slavery :  when  it  had  received  its 
death-blow,  when  the  struggle  ended  and  the  right  pre- 
vailed. Jehovah  had  conquered,  His  children  were 
free,  and  Bryant  raised  a  chant  like  that  of  Miriam,  — 

"O  thou  great  Wrong,  that,  through  the  slow-paced  years, 
Didst  hold  thy  millions  fettered ; 


"  Go,  now,  accursed  of  God,  and  take  thy  place 
With  hateful  memories  of  the  elder  time ! 

"  Lo !  the  foul  phantoms,  silent  in  the  gloom 
Of  the  flown  ages,  part  to  yield  thee  room." 

This  swelling  poem,  "  The  Death  of  Slavery,"  was 
not  needed  to  assure  us  that  the  cause  of  freedom 
touched  his  heart.  For,  secondly,  his  true  counterpart 
to  Whittier's  work  was  to  be  found  in  the  vigorous 
antislavery  assaults  he  made  for  years  in  the  journal 
of  which  he  died  the  editor.  There  it  was  that  he 
exercised  his  influence  and  mental  power  upon  "the 


THE   CLOSING  SCENE. 


93 


rebuke  of  fraud  and  oppression  of  whatever  clime  or 
race." 

His  prose  labors  were  an  outlet,  constantly  afforded 
in  his  journalism,  through  which  much  of  that  energy 
escaped  which  otherwise  would  have  varied  the  mo- 
tives and  increased  the  body  of  his  song.  On  the 
whole,  though  he  was  without  a  philologist's  equipment, 
there  were  few  better  writers  of  simple,  nervous  Eng- 
lish. He  made  it  for  half  a  century  the  instrument  of 
his  every-day  thought  and  purpose ;  as  a  leader-writer, 
a  traveller  and  correspondent,  an  essayist  and  orator, 
a  political  disputant.  His  polemic  vigor  and  acerbity 
were  worked  off  in  his  middle-life  editorials,  and  in  de- 
fence of  what  he  thought  to  be  right.  There  he  was, 
indeed,  unyielding,  and  other  pens  recall  the  traditions 
of  his  political  controversies.  He  never  confused  the 
distinct  provinces  of  prose  and  verse.  Refer  to  any- 
thing written  by  him,  of  the  former  kind,  and  you  find 
plainness,  well-constructed  syntax,  free  from  any  cheap 
gloss  of  rhetoric  or  the  "jingle  of  an  effeminate 
rhythm." 

As  in  written  prose  and  verse,  so  in  speech  and 
public  offices.  The  long  series  of  addresses  on  civic 
occasions  closed  with  one  which  brought  him  to  his 
death.  Mastering  his  work  to  the  very  end,  it  was  his 
lot  at  last  to  bow,  as  became  a  poet  of  Nature,  be- 
fore her  own  life-nurturing,  life-destroying  forces,  and 
thus  submit  to  her  kindest  universal  law.  The  ques- 
tion of  a  passage  in  "An  Evening  Revery"  was  an- 
swered, and  the  prophecy  fulfilled :  — 

"  O  thou  great  Movement  of  the  Universe, 
Or  Change,  or  Flight  of  Time  —  for  yea'         *  ! 
That  bearest,  silently,  this  visible  scene 
Into  night's  shadow  and  the  streaming  ' 
Of  starlight,  whither  art  thou  bearing  r  r 


His  prose 
labors. 


94 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT, 


I  feel  the  mighty  current  sweep  me  on, 

Yet  know  not  whither.     Man  foretells  afar 

The  courses  of  the  stars ;  the  very  hour 

He  knows  when  they  shall  darken  or  grow  bright  j 

Yet  doth  the  eclipse  of  Sorrow  and  of  Death 

Come  unforewarned." 


CHAPTER    IV. 
JOHN   GREENLEAF  WHITTIER. 


A  PLEASANT  story,  that  went  the  round  shortly 
after  the  close  of  our  Civil  War,  shows  the  char- 
acter of  Whittier's  hold  upon  his  countrymen.     It  was 
said  that  one  among  a  group  of  prominent  men,  when 
conversation    on   politics   and   finance   began   to   lag, 
asked  the  question,  Who  is  the  best  American  poet? 
Horace  Greeley,  who  was  of  the  party,  replied  with 
the  name  of  Whittier,  and  his  judgment  was  instantly 
approved  by  all  present.     These  active,  practical  Amer- 
icans, patriots  or  demagogues,  —  some  of  them,  doubt- 
less, of  the  "heated  barbarian"  type,— for  once  found 
their  individual  preferences  thus  expressed  and  in  ac- 
cord.    At  that  climacteric  time  the  Pleiad  of  our  elder 
poets  was  complete  and  shining,  —  not  a  star  was  lost. 
But  the  instinct  of  these  stern,  hard-headed  men  was 
in  favor  of  the  Quaker  bard,  the  celibate  and  prophetic 
recluse ;  he  alone  appealed  to  the  poetic  side  of  their 
natures.     We  do  not  hold  a  press  item  to  absolute  ex 
actness  in  its  report  of  words.     The  epithet  "best" 
may  not  have  been  employed  by  the  questioner  on  that 
occasion  •  were  it  not  for  the  likelihood  that  those  to 
whom  he  spoke  would  not  have  laid  much  stress  upon 
verbal  distinctions,  one  might  guess  that  he  said  the 
most  national,  or  representative,  or  inborn,  of  our  poets. 
The  value  of  the  incident  remains ;  it  was  discovered 


His  stand- 
ing with 
typical 
Ameri- 
cans of  his 
own  time. 


96 


yOHN  GREENLEAF   WHITTIER. 


English 
opinion: 
"  Pall ' 
Mall  Ga- 
zette," 
Jan.  30, 
1882. 


How far  1 

national 

foet. 


See  pp.  5- 
10. 


that  Whittier  most  nearly  satisfied  the  various  poetic 
needs  of  trie  typical,  resolute  Americans,  men  of  his 
own  historic  generation,  who  composed  that  assem- 
blage. 

With  this  may  be  considered  the  fact  that  it  is  the 
habit  of  compilers  and  brief  reviewers,  whose  work  is 
that  of  generalization,  to  speak  of  him  as  a  "thor- 
oughly American  "  poet.  An  English  critic,  in  a  no- 
tice marked  by  comprehension  of  our  home-spirit,  and 
with  the  honest  effort  of  a  delicate  mind  to  get  at 
the  secret  of  Whittier's  unstudied  verse,  and  gain  the 
best  that  can  be  gained  from  it,  finds  him  to  be  the 
"  most  national  "  of  our  writers,  and  the  most  charac- 
teristic through  his  extraordinary  fluency,  narrow  ex- 
perience, and  wide  sympathy,  —  language  which  im- 
plies a  not  unfriendly  recognition  of  traits  which  have 
been  thought  to  be  American,  —  loquacity,  provincial- 
ism, and  generosity  of  heart. 

In  sentiments  thus  spoken  and  written  there  is  a 
good  deal  of  significance.  But  the  words  of  the  for- 
eign verdict  cannot  be  taken  precisely  as  they  stand. 
Has  there  been  a  time,  as  yet,  when  any  writer  could 
be  thoroughly  American  ?  What  is  the  meaning  of  the 
phrase,  —  the  most  limited  meaning  which  a  citizen, 
true  to  our  notion  of  this  country's  future,  will  enter- 
tain for  a  moment?  Assuredly  not  a  quality  which 
is  collegiate,  like  Longfellow's,  or  of  a  section,  like 
Whittier's,  or  of  a  special  and  cultured  class,  which 
alone  can  enjoy  Whitman's  sturdy  attempt  to  create  a 
new  song  for  the  people  before  the  accepted  and  ac- 
cepting time.  During  the  period  of  these  men  Amer- 
ica scarcely  has  been  more  homogeneous  in  popular 
characteristics  than  in  climate  and  topography.  I  have 
discussed  the  perplexing  topic  of  our  nationalism,  and 
am  willing  to  believe  that  these  States  are  blending 


NEW  ENGLAND'S  BARD. 


97 


into  a  country  whose  distinctions  of  race  and  tendency 
will  steadily  lessen  j  but  whether  such  a  faith  is  well 
grounded  is  still  an  open  question.  And  whatsoever 
change  is  to  ensue,  in  the  direction  of  homogeneity, 
will  be  the  counterswing  of  a  vibration  whose  first  im- 
pulse was  away  from  the  uniformity  of  the  early  colo- 
nies to  the  broadest  divergence  consistent  with  a  com- 
mon language  and  government.  At  Whittier's  time 
this  divergence  was  greater  than  before,  —  greater, 
possibly,  than  it  ever  can  be  again.  In  fact,  it  is 
partly  as  a  result  of  this  superlative  divergence  that 
he  is  called  our  most  national  poet.  If  his  song  was 
not  that  of  the  people  at  large,  it  aided  to  do  away 
with  something  which  prevented  us  from  being  one 
people;  and  it  was  national  in  being  true  to  a  char- 
acteristic portion  of  America,  —  the  intense  expression 
of  its  specific  and  governing  ideas. 

The  most  discriminating  precis  is  that  which  Mr. 
Parkman  contributed  at  a  gathering  in  honor  of  the 
Quaker  bard.  The  exact  eye  of  the  author  of  "  Fron- 
tenac  "  saw  the  poet  as  he  is  :  "  The  Poet  of  New  Eng- 
land. His  genius  drew  its  nourishment  from  her  soil ; 
his  pages  are  the  mirror  of  her  outward  nature,  and 
the  strong  utterance  of  her  inward  life."  The  gloss 
of  this  sentiment  belonged  to  the  occasion  j  its  anal- 
ysis is  specifically  correct,  and  this  with  full  recogni- 
tion of  Whittier's  most  famous  kinsmen  in  birth  and 
song.  The  distinction  has  been  well  made,  that  the 
national  poet  is  not  always  the  chief  poet  of  a  nation. 
As  a  poet  of  New  England,  Whittier  had  little  com- 
petition from  the  bookish  Longfellow,  except  in  the 
latter's  sincere  feeling  for  the  eastern  sea  and  shore, 
and  artistic  handling  of  the  courtlier  legends  of  the 
province.  He  certainly  found  a  compeer  in  Lowell, 
whose  dialect  idyls  prove  that  only  genius  is  needed 
7 


Distinc- 
tively., 
the  Poet  of 
New  Eng' 
land. 


98 


JOHN  GREEN  LEAF   WHITTIER. 


A  test  of 
this  state- 
ment. 


New  Eng- 
land's in- 
■fttience 
upon  the 
country  at 
large. 


to  enable  a  scholar,  turned  farmer,  to  extract  the  rich- 
est products  of  a  soil  ;  and  the  lyric  fervor  of  Low- 
ell's odes  is  our  most  imaginative  expression  of  that 
New  England  sentiment  which  has  extended  itself,  an 
ideal  influence,  with  the  movement  of  its  inheritors 
to  the  farthest  West.  Emerson,  on  his  part,  has  vol- 
atilized the  essence  of  New  England  thought  into 
wreaths  of  spiritual  beauty.  Yet  Mr.  Parkman,  than 
whom  no  scholar  is  less  given  to  looseness  of  expres- 
sion, terms  Whittier  the  poet  of  New  England,  as  if 
by  eminence,  and  I  think  with  exceeding  justice.  The 
title  is  based  on  apt  recognition  of  evidence  that  we 
look  to  the  people  at  large  for  the  substance  of  na- 
tional or  sectional  traits.  The  base,  not  the  peak,  of 
the  pyramid  determines  its  bearings.  There  is,  to  be 
sure,  as  much  human  nature  in  the  mansion  as  in  the 
cottage,  in  the  study  or  drawing-room  as  in  the  shop 
and  field.  But  just  as  we  call  those  genre  canvases, 
whereon  are  painted  idyls  of  the  fireside,  the  roadside, 
and  the  farm,  pictures  of  "  real  life,"  so  we  find  the 
true  gauge  of  popular  feeling  in  songs  that  are  dear 
to  the  common  people  and  true  to  their  unsophisti- 
cated life  and  motive. 

Here  we  again  confront  the  statement  that  the  six 
Eastern  States  were  not  and  are  not  America  ;  not 
the  nation,  but  a  section,  —  the  New  Englanders  seem- 
ing almost  a  race  by  themselves.  But  what  a  section  ! 
And  what  a  people,  when  we  take  into  account,  su- 
peradded to  their  genuine  importance,  a  self-depen- 
dence ranking  with  that  of  the  Scots  or  Gascons  !  As 
distinct  a  people,  in  their  way,  as  Mr.  Cable's  Creoles, 
old  or  new.  Go  by  rail  along  the  Eastern  coast,  and 
note  the  nervous,  wiry  folk  that  crowd  the  stations  ; 
—  their  eager  talk,  their  curious  scrutiny  of  ordinary 
persons  and  incidents,  make  it  easy  to  believe  that  the 


HIS  DA  Y  AND   GENERA  TION. 


99 


trait  chosen  by  Sprague  for  the  subject  of  his  didactic 
poem  still  is  a  chief  motor  of  New  England's  progress, 
and  not  unjustly  its  attribute  by  tradition.  This  hive 
of  individuality  has  sent  out  swarms,  and  scattered  its 
ideas  like  pollen  throughout  the  northern  belt  of  pur 
States.  As  far  as  these  have  taken  hold,  modified  by 
change  and  experience,  New  England  stands  for  the 
nation,  and  her  singer  for  the  national  poet.  In  their 
native,  unadulterated  form,  they  pervade  the  verse  of 
Whittier.  It  is  notable  that  the  sons  of  the  Puritans 
should  take  their  songs  from  a  Quaker ;  yet  how  far 
unlike,  except  in  the  doctrine  of  non-resistance,  were 
the  Puritans  and  Quakers  of  Endicott's  time  ?  To  me, 
they  seem  grounded  in  the  same  inflexible  ethics,  and 
alike  disposed  to  supervise  the  ethics  of  all  mankind. 
Time  and  culture  have  tempered  the  New  England 
virtues ;  the  Eastern  frugality,  independence,  propa- 
gandism,  have  put  on  a  more  attractive  aspect;  a 
sense  of  beauty  has  been  developed,  —  the  mental  rec- 
ognition of  it  finally  granted  to  a  northern  race,  who 
still  lack  the  perfect  flexibility  and  grace  observable 
wherever  that  sense  comes  by  nature  and  directs  the 
popular  conscience.  As  for  the  rural  inhabitants  of 
New  England,  less  changed  by  travel  and  accomplish- 
ments, we  know  what  they  were  and  are,  —  among 
them  none  more  affectionate,  pious,  resolute,  than 
Whittier,  beyond  doubt  their  representative  poet. 

He  belongs,  moreover,  —  and  hence  the  point  of 
the  incident  first  related,  —  to  the  group  now  rapidly 
disappearing,  of  which  Horace  Greeley  was  a  conspic- 
uous member,  and  to  an  epoch  that  gave  its  workers 
little  time  for  over-refinement,  Persian  apparatus,  and 
the  cultivation  of  aesthetics.  That  group  of  scarred 
and  hardy  speakers,  journalists,  agitators,  felt  that  he 
was  of  them,  and  found  his  song  revealing  the  highest 


IOO 


JOHN  GREENLEAF  WHITTIER. 


purpose  of  their  boisterous,  unsentimental  careers. 
These  men  —  like  all  men  who  do  not  retrograde  — 
had  an  ideal.  This  he  expressed,  in  measures  that 
moved  them,  and  whose  perfection  they  had  no  thought 
or  faculty  of  questioning.  Many  of  them  came  from 
obscure  and  rural  homes,  and  to  read  his  verse  was  to 
recall  the  scent  of  the  clover  and  apple-bloom,  to  hear 
again  the  creak  of  the  well-pole,  the  rattle  of  the  bars 
in  the  lane,  —  the  sights  and  freshness  of  youth  pass- 
ing for  a  moment,  a  vision  of  peace,  over  their  bat- 
tlefield. They  needed,  also,  their  own  pibroch  and 
battle-cry,  and  this  his  song  rang  out ;  their  determi- 
nation was  in  it,  blended  with  the  tenderness  from 
which  such  men  are  never  wholly  free. 

His  ultimate  reputation,  then,  will  be  inseparable 
from  that  of  his  section  and  its  class.  He  may  not 
hold  it  as  one  of  those  whose  work  appeals  to  all  times 
and  races,  and  whose  art  is  so  refined  as  to  be  the 
model  of  after-poets.  But  he  was  the  singer  of  what 
was  not  an  empty  day,  and  of  a  section  whose  move- 
ment became  that  of  a  nation,  and  whose  purpose  in 
the  end  was  grandly  consummated.  We  already  see, 
and  the  future  will  see  it  more  clearly,  that  no  party 
ever  did  a  vaster  work  than  his  party ;  that  he,  like 
Hampden  and  Milton,  is  a  character  not  produced  in 
common  times  ;  that  no  struggle  was  more  momentous 
than  that  which  preceded  our  Civil  War,  no  question 
ever  affected  the  destinies  of  a  great  people  more 
vitally  than  the  antislavery  issue,  as  urged  by  its  pro- 
moters. Neither  Greece  nor  Rome,  not  even  England, 
the  battle-ground  of  Anglo-Saxon  liberty,  has  supplied 
a  drama  of  more  import  than  that  in  which  the  poets 
and  other  heroes  of  our  Civil  Reformation  played  their 
parts. 


THE  QUAKER. 


IOI 


II. 

Whittier's  origin  and  early  life  were  auspicious 
for  one  who  was  to  become  a  poet  of  the  people.  His 
muse  shielded  him  from  the  relaxing  influence  of  lux- 
ury and  superfine  culture.  These  could  not  reach  the 
primitive  homestead  in  the  beautiful  Merrimack  Val- 
ley, five  miles  out  from  the  market-town  of  Haverhill, 
where  all  things  were  elementary  and  of  the  plainest 
cast.  The  tray^^oMhe_Jnends  made  his  boyhood 
still  more  simple ;  otherwise,  as  I  have  said,  it  mat- 
tered little  whether  he  derived  from  Puritan  or  Quaker 
sources.  Still,  it  was  much,  in  one  respect,  to  be  de- 
scended from  Quakers  and  Huguenots  used  to  suffer 
and  be  strong  for  conscience'  sake.  It  placed  him 
years  in  advance  of  the  comfortable  Brahmin  class,  with 
its  blunted  sense  of  right  and  wrong,  and,  to  use 
his  own  words,  turned  him  "  so  early  away  from  what 
Roger  Williams  calls  '  the  world's  great  trinity,  pleas- 
ure, profit,  and  honor,'  to  take  side  with  the  poor 
and  oppressed."  The  Puritans  conformed  to  the  rule 
of  the  Old  Testament,  the  Friends  to  the  spirit  of 
the  New.  One  has  only  to  read  our  colonial  annals 
to  know  how  the  Jews  got  on  under  the  Mosaic  law, 
inasmuch  as  to  the  end  of  the  Mather  dynasty  the 
pandect  of  Leviticus,  in  all  its  terror,  was  sternly  en- 
forced by  church  and  state.  The  Puritans  had  two 
gods,  Deus  and  Diabolus  ;  the  Quakers  recognized 
the  former  alone,  and  chiefly  through  his  incarnation 
as  the  Prince  of  Peace.  They  exercised,  however, 
the  right  of  interference  with  other  people's  code  and 
practice,  after  a  fashion  the  more  intolerable  from  a 
surrender  of  the  right  to  establish  their  own  by  rope 
and  sword.  Whittier's  Quaker  strain,  as  Frothingham 
has  shown,  yielded  him  wholly  to  the  "  intellectual  pas- 


Tkt 

Puritans 
and  the 
Quakers. 


The  fioefs 

Qtiaker- 

ism. 


102 


JOHN  GREENLEAF   WHITTIER. 


sion  "  that  Transcendentalism  aroused,  and  still  keeps 
him  obedient  to  the  Inward  Light.  And  it  made  him 
a  poet  militant,  a  crusader  whose  moral  weapons,  since 
he  must  disown  the  carnal,  were  keen  of  edge  and 
seldom  in  their  scabbards.  The  fire  of  his  deep-set 
eyes,  whether  betokening,  like  that  of  his  kinsman 
Webster,  the  Batchelder  blood,  or  inherited  from  some 
old  Feuillevert,  strangely  contrasts  with  the  benign 
expression  of  his  mouth,  —  that  firm  serenity,  which 
by  transmitted  habitude  dwells  upon  the  lips  of  the 
sons  and  daughters  of  peace. 

There  was  no  affectation  in  the  rusticity  of  his  youth. 
It  was  the  real  thing,  —  the  neat  and  saving  homeli- 
ness of  the  Eastern  farm.  All  the  belongings  of  the 
household  were  not  the  equivalent  of  a  week's  ex- 
penses in  a  modern  city  home,  yet  there  was  no  want 
and  nothing  out  of  tone.  We  see  the  wooden  house 
and  barn,  set  against  the  background  of  rugged  acres ; 
indoors,  still  the  loom  and  wheel,  and  still  the^Quaker 
mother,  dear  old  toiling  one,  the  incarnation  of  Taith 
and  charity,  beloved  by  a  loyal,  bright-eyed  family 
group.  /There  was  little  to  read  but  the  Bible,  "  Pil- 
grim's Progress,"  and  the  weekly  newspaper  ;  no 
schooling  but  in  the  district  school-house ;  nothing  to 
learn  of  the  outer  world  except  from  the  eccentric 
and  often  picturesque  strollers  that  in  those  days  ped- 
dled, sang,  or  fiddled  from  village  to  village.  Yet  the 
boy's  poetic  fancy  and  native  sense  of  rhythm  were 
not  inert.  He  listened  eagerly  to  the  provincial  tra- 
ditions and  legends,  a  genuine  folk-lore,  recounted  by 
his  elders  at  the  fireside  ;  and  he  began  to  put  iris 
thoughts  in  numbers  at  the  earliest  possible  ageY  A 
great  stimulus  came  in  the  shape  of  Burns's  poems, 
a  cheap  volume  of  which  fell  into  his  possession  by 
one  of  those  happenings  that  seem  ordained  for  poets. 


NEWSPAPER  LIFE. 


IO3 


{ 


His  first  printed  efforts  were  an  imitation  of  the  dia- 
lect and  measures  of  the  Scottish  bard,  and  perhaps 
no  copybook  could  have  been  more  suitable  until  he 
formed  his  own  hand  —  a  time  not  long  postponed. 
He  well  might  have  fancied  that  in  his  experience  there 
was  much  in  common  with  that  of  his  master ;  that 
he,  too,  might  live  to  affirm,  though  surely  in  words 
less  grandiloquent,  "The  Genius  of  Poetry  found 
me  at  the  plough,  and  threw  her  inspiring  mantle  over 
me."  (Of  our  leading  poets,  he  was  almost  the  only 
one  who  learned  Nature  by  working  with  her  at  all 
seasons,  under  the  sky  and  in  the  wood  and  fiel#.  So 
much  for  his  boyhood  ;  his  after  course  was  affected 
greatly  by  the  man  then  coming  into  notice  as  a  fa- 
natic and  agitator,  the  lion-hearted  champion  of  free- 
dom, long  since  glorified  with  the  name  he  gave  to 
his  first  pronunciamento,  the  Liberator/  A  piece  of 
verse  sent  by  young  Whittier  to  the  Newburyport 
"  Free  Press  "  led  Garrison,  its  editor,  to  look  up  his 
contributor,  and  to  encourage  him  with  praise  and 
counsel.)  From  that  time  we  see  the  poet  working  up- 
ward in  the  old-fashioned  way.  A  clever  youth  need 
/not  turn  gauger  in  a  land  of  schools  and  newspapers. 
Whittier's  training  was  supplemented  by  a  year  or 
more  at  the  academy,  and  by  a  winter's  practice  as  a 
teacher  himself,  —  fulfilling  thus  the  customary  Lehr- 
jahre  of  our  village  aspirants. /in  another  year  we 
find  him  the  conductor  of  a  tariff  newspaper  in  Bos- 
ton. Ejefore  his  twenty-fifth  birthday  he  had  experi- 
enced the  vicissitudes  of  old-time  journalism,  chang- 
ing from  one  desk  to  another,  at  Haverhill,  Boston, 
and  Hartford,  still  pursuing  literature,  erelong  some- 
what known  as  a  poet  and  sketch-writer,  and  near  the 
close  of  this  period  issuing  his  first  book  of  Legends, 
in  prose  and  verse.     At  Hartford  also  he  edited,  with 


io4 


JOHN  GREENLEAF  WHITTIER. 


a  well-composed  preface,  the  posthumous  collection  of 
his  friend  Brainard's  poems. 

But   the   mission   of  his  life   now   came  upon  him. 
He    received   a   call.   (In    183 1    Garrison   had    begun 
"  The  Liberator."     He  was  Whittier's  ally  and  guide ; 
the  ardor  of  the  poet  required  an  heroic  purpose,  and 
Garrison's  crusade  was   one  to   which   his  whole   na- 
ture inclined  him.     It  was  no  personal  ambition  that 
made   him  the  psalmist  of   the  new  movement.     His 
verses,  crude  as  they  were,  had  gained  favor ;  he  al- 
ready had   a   name,    and   a   career  was   predicted  for 
him.     He  now  doomed   himself   to   years  of   retarda- 
tion  and  disfavor,  and   had   no  reason  to  foresee  the 
honors  they  would  bring  him  in   the  end.     What  he 
tells   us  is   the  truth :    "  For  twenty   years   my  name 
would  have  injured  the  circulation  of  any  of  the  lit- 
erary or   political  journals   in   the   country."     During 
this  term  his  imaginative  writings  were  to  be  "simply 
episodical,"  something  apart  from  what   he  says  had 
been   the   main   purpose    of    his   life.     He   was   bent 
upon  the   service   which  led    Samuel  May  to  declare 
that  of  all  our  poets  he  "  has,  from  first  to  last,  done 
most  for  the  abolition  of  slavery.     All  my  anti-slavery 
brethren,   I    doubt   not,   will  unite  with  me   to  crown 
him    as    our    laureate."     Bryant,    many   years    later,  • 
pointed  out  that  in  recent  times  the   road  of   others 
to  literary  success    had  been    made   smooth  by   anti- 
slavery  opinions,  adding   that   in  Whittier's    case   the 
reverse   of   this   was  true;   that  he  made  himself   the 
champion   of    the    slave  "  when    to  say  aught  against 
the  national  curse   was  to   draw  upon  one's   self   the 
bitterest  hatred,  loathing,   and  contempt  of  the  great 
majority  of  men  throughout   the  land."     Unquestion- 
ably  Whittier's    ambition,    during    his    novitiate,    had 
been  to  do  something  as  a  poet  and  man  of  letters. 


THE  CAMPAIGN  WITH  GARRISON. 


I05 


Not  that  he  had  learned  what  few,  in  fact,  at  that 
time  realized,  that  the  highest  art  aims  at  creative 
beauty,  and  that  devotion,  repose,  and  calm  are  es- 
sential to  the  mastery  of  an  ideal.  But  he  was  a 
natural  poet,  and,  if  he  had  not  been  filled  with  con- 
victions, might  have  reached  this  knowledge  as  soon 
as  others  who  possessed  the  lyrical  impulse.  The 
fact  that  he  made  his  rarest  gift  subsidiary  to  his 
new  purpose,  in  the  flush  of  early  reputation,  when 
one  is  most  sensitive  to  popular  esteem,  has  led  me 
to  dwell  a  little  upon  the  story  of  his  life,  and  to 
observe  how  life  itself  may  be  made  no  less  inspiring 
than  a  poem.  I  would  not  be  misunderstood;  we 
measure  poetry  at  its  worth,  not  at  the  worth  of  its 
maker.  This  is  the  law ;  yet  in  Whittier's  record,  if 
ever,  there  is  an  appeal  to  the  higher  law  that  takes 
note  of  exceptions.  /Some  of  his  verse,  as  a  pattern 
for  verse  hereafter,  is  not  what  it  might  have  been 
if  he  had  consecrated  himself  to  poetry  as  an  art; 
but  it  is  memorably  connected  with  historic  times, 
and  his  rudest  shafts  of  song  were  shot  true  and  far 
and  tipped  with  flame.  This  should  make  it  clear 
to  foreigners  why  we  entertain  for  him  a  measure  of 
the  feeling  with  which  Hungarians  speak  of  Petofi, 
and  Russians  of  Turgenieff.  His  songs  touched  the 
hearts  of  his  people.  It  was  the  generation  which 
listened  in  childhood  to  the  Voices  of  Freedom  that 
fulfilled  their  prophecies. 

Garrison  started  his  journal  with  the  watchword  of 
"  unconditional-emancipation, "  and  the  pledge  to  be 
"  harsh  as  truth  and  uncompromising  as  justice ;  .  .  . 
not  to  retreat  a  single  inch,  and  to  be  heard."  Whit- 
tier  reenforced  him  with  lyre  and  pen,  —  though  some- 
times the  two  differed  in  policy,  —  and  soon  was 
writing  abolition  pamphlets,  editing  "The  Freeman," 


Hts  gift 
subsidiary 
to  "the 
cause." 


"  The 
Voice*  of 
Freedom? 
1849,  «&■! 
etc. 


Record 
and  expe- 
rience. 


io6 


JOHN  GREENLEAF  WHITTIER. 


and  active  in  the  thick  of  the  conflict.  He  was  the 
secretary  o£  the  first  anti-slavery  convention,  a  signer 
of  the  Declaration  of  Sentiments,  and,  at  an  age 
when  bardlings  are  making  sonnets  to  a  mistress's 
eyebrow,  he  was  facing  mobs  at  Plymouth,  Boston, 
Philadelphia.  After  seven  or  eight  years  of  this 
stormy  service,  he  settled  down  in  quarters  at  Ames- 
bury,  sending  out,  as  ever,  his  prose  and  verse  to 
forward  the  cause.  But  now  his  humane  and  fer- 
vent motives  were  understood  even  by  opponents, 
and  the  sweetness  of  his  rural  lyrics  and  idyls  had 
testified  for  him  as  a  poet.  In  1843  the  most  -eclec- 
tic of  publishing  houses  welcomed  him  to  its  list ;  the 
rise  of  poetry  had  set  in,  and  Longfellow,  Emerson, 
Lowell,  were  gaining  a  constituency.  As  he  grew  in 
favor,  attractive  editions  of  his  poems  appeared,  and 
his  later  volumes  came  from  the  press  as  frequently 
as  Longfellow's,  —  more  than  one  of  them,  like 
"  Snow  -  Bound,"  receiving  in  this  country  as  warm 
and  wide  a  welcome  as  those  of  the  Cambridge  lau- 
reate. After  the  war,  Garrison  —  at  last  crowned  with 
honor,  and  rejoicing  in  the  consummation  of  his 
work— was  seldom  heard.  Whittier,  in  his  hermit- 
age, the  resort  of  many  pilgrims,  has  steadily  re- 
newed his  song.  While  chanting  in  behalf  of  every 
patriotic  or  humane  effort  of  his  time,  he  has  been 
the  truest  singer  of  our  homestead  and  wayside  life, 
and  has  rendered  all  the  legends  of  his  region  into 
familiar  verse.  The  habit  of  youth  has  clung  to  him, 
and  he  often  misses,  in  his  too  facile  rhyme  and 
rhythm,  the  graces,  the  studied  excellence  of  modern 
work.  But  all  in  all,  as  we  have  seen,  and  more  than 
others,  he  has  read  the  heart  of  New  England,  and  ex- 
pressed the  convictions  of  New  England  at  her  height 
of  moral   supremacy,  —  the   distinctive  enjoyment  of 


TECHNICAL   CARELESSNESS. 


IO7 


which,  in  view  of  the  growth  of  the  Union,  and  the 
spread  of  her  broods  throughout  its  territory,  may 
not  recur  again. 

III. 

It  would  not  be  fair  to  test  Whittier  by  the  quality 
of  his  off-hand  work.  His  verse  always  was  auxiliary 
to  what  he  deemed  the  main  business  of  his  life,  and 
has  varied  with  the  occasions  that  inspired  it.  His 
object  was  not  the  artist's,  to  make  the  occasion  serve 
his  poem,  but  directly  the  reverse.  Perhaps  his  nai- 
vete and  carelessness  more  truthfully  spoke  for  his 
constituents  than  the  polish  of  those  bred  in  seats 
of  culture ;  many  of  his  stanzas  reflect  the  homeliness 
of  a  provincial  region,  and  are  the  spontaneous  out- 
come of  what  poetry  there  was  in  it.  His  feeling 
gained  expression  in  simple  speech  and  the  forms 
which  came  readily.  Probably  it  occurred  somewhat 
late  to  the  mind  of  this  pure  and  duteous  enthusiast 
that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  duty  to  one's  art,  and 
that  diffuseness,  bad  rhymes,  and  prosaic  stanzas  are 
alien  to  it.  Nor  is  it  strange  that  the  artistic  moral 
sense  of  a  Quaker  poet,  reared  on  a  New  England 
farmstead,  at  first  should  be  deficient.  A  careless 
habit,  once  formed,  made  it  hard  for  him  to  master 
the  touch  that  renders  a  new  poem  by  this  or  that 
expert  a  standard,  and  its  appearance  an  event.  His 
ear  and  voice  were  naturally  fine,  as  some  of  his 
early  work  plainly  shows.  "Cassandra  Southwick," 
"The  New  Wife  and  the  Old,"  and  "The  Virginia 
Slave  Mother  "  were  of  an  original  flavor  and  up  to 
the  standards  of  that  day.  If  he  had  occupied  him- 
self wholly  with  poetic  work,  he  would  have  grown 
as  steadily  as  his  most  successful  compeers.     But  his 


io8 


JOHN  GREENLEAF  WHITTIER. 


Hasty 
composi- 
tion. 


Cp.  ''Vic- 
torian Po- 
ets": pp. 
8t,  82. 


vocation  became  that  of  trjjrnpeter  to  the  impetuous 
reform  brigade.  He  supplied  verse  on  the  instant, 
often  full  of  vigor,  but  often  little  more  than  the 
rallying-blast  of  a  passing  campaign.  We  are  told 
by  May  that  "  from  1832  to  the  close  of  our  dreadful 
war  in  1865,  his  harp  of  liberty  was  never  hung  up. 
Not  an  important  occasion,  escaped  him.  Every  sig- 
nificant incident  drew  from  his  heart  some  pertinent 
and  often  very  impressive  or  rousing  verses."  It  is 
safe  to  assume  that  if  he  had  been  more  discrimi- 
nating, or  had  cherished  the  resolve  of  Longfellow  or 
Tennyson  to  make  even  conventional  pieces  artistic, 
many  occasions  would  have  escaped  him.  We  see 
again  that  Art  will  forego  none  of  its  attributes. 
Sincerity  and  spontaneity  are  the  well-springs  of  its 
clearest  flow ;  yet,  if  dependent  on  these  traits  alone, 
it  may  become  cheap  and  common,  and  utterly  fail 
of  permanence.  In  the  time  under  notice  there  was 
nothing  more  likely  to  confuse  the  imagination  than 
the  life  of  a  journalist,  especially  of  a  provincial  or 
reform  editor.  The  case  of  Hood,  one  of  the  truest 
of  poets  by  nature,  has  shown  us  something  of  the 
dangers  that  beset  a  journalist-poet.  This  Whittier 
emphatically  became,  though  in  every  way  superior 
to  the  band  of  temperance,  abolition,  and  partisan 
rhymesters  that,  like  the  shadows  of  his  own  failings, 
sprang  up  in  his  train.  He  wrote  verses  very  much 
as  he  wrote  editorials,  and  they  were  forcible  only 
when  he  was  deeply  moved  by  stirring  crises  and 
events.  Some  of  his  best  were  tributes  to  leaders, 
or  rebukes  of  great  men  fallen.  But  he  was  too  apt 
to  write  weak  eulogies  of  obscurer  people  j  for  every 
friend  or  ally  had  a  claim  upon  his  muse. 

His  imperfections  were  those  of  his  time  and  class, 
and  he  was  too  engrossed  with  a  mission  to  overcome 


REFORM-  VERSE. 


IO9 


them.  He  never  learned  compression,  and  still  is 
troubled  more  with  fatal  fluency  than  our  other  poets 
of  equal  rank,  —by  an  inability  to  reject  poor  stanzas 
and  to  stop  at  the  right  place.  Mrs.  Browning  was 
a  prominent  sufferer  in  this  respect.  The  two  poets 
were  so  much  alike,  with  their  indifference  to  method 
and  taste,  as  to  suggest  the  question  (especially  in 
view  of  the  subaltern  reform-verse-makers)  whether 
advocates  of  causes,  and  other  people  of  great  moral 
zeal,  are  not  relatively  deficient  in  artistic  conscien- 
tiousness and  in  what  may  be  called  aesthetic  recti- 
tude. 

An  occasional  looseness  in  matters  of  fact  may  be 
forgiven  one  who  writes  from  impulse.  We  owe 
"  Barbara  Frietchie  "  to  the  glow  excited  by  a  news- 
paper report;  and  the  story  of  "Skipper  Ireson's 
Ride,"  now  challenged,  if  not  true,  is  too  well  told  to 
be  lost.  Whittier  became,  like  a  mother's  careless, 
warm-hearted  child,  dearer  for  his  very  shortcomings. 
But  they  sometimes  mar  his  bravest  outbursts.  Slight 
changes  would  have  made  that  eloquent  lyric,  "  Ran- 
dolph of  Roanoke,"  a  perfect  one.  Feeling  himself 
a  poet,  he  sang  by  ear  alone,  in  a  somewhat  primitive 
time ;  but  the  finest  genius,  in  music  or  painting  for 
example,  with  the  aid  of  a  commonplace  teacher  can 
get  over  more  ground  in  a  month  than  he  would  cover 
unaided  in  a  year ;  since  the  teacher  represents  what 
is  already  discovered  and  established.  There  came  a 
period  when  Whittier's  verse  was  composed  solely  with 
poetic  intent,  and  after  a  less  careless  fashion.  It  is 
chiefly  that  portion  of  it,  written  from  i860  onward, 
that  has  secured  him  a  more  than  local  reputation. 
His  ruder  rhymes  of  a  day  bear  witness  to  an  ex- 
perience which  none  could  better  illustrate  than  by 
citing  the  words  of  the  poet  himself  : 


The  Poets 
of  Reform* 


Culture  an 
aid  to  gen- 
ius. 


no 


JOHN  GREENLEAF   WHITTIER. 


Prose 
writings. 


"Mar- 
garet 
Smith's 
Journal] 
1849. 


Whittierys 
foetical 
style,  gen- 
ius, and 
works. 


"Hater  of  din  and  riot, 
He  lived  in  days  unquiet; 
And,  lover  of  all  beauty, 
Trod  the  hard  ways  of  duty." 

In  prose  he  soon  became  skilled.  His  letters  often 
are  models  of  epistolary  style;  the  best  articles  and 
essays  from  his  pen  are  written  with  a  true  and  di- 
rect hand,  though  rather  barren  of  the  epigram  and 
original  thought  which  enrich  the  prose  of  Lowell, 
Holmes,  and  Emerson.  Margaret  S?nittts  journal  is 
a  charming  nuova  antica;  a  trifle  thin  in  plot,  but 
such  a  quaint  reproduction  of  the  early  colonial  pe- 
riod—its people,  manners,  and  discourse  — as  scarcely 
any  other  author  save  Hawthorne,  at  the  date  of  its 
production,  could  have  given  us. 


IV. 

His  metrical  style,  except  in  certain  lyrics  of  marked 
individuality,  is  that  of  our  elders  who  wrote  in  dif- 
fuse measures,  and  whose  readers  favored  sentiment 
more  than  beauty  or  wit.  It  is  a  degree  more  old- 
fashioned  than  styles  which  are  so  much  older  as  to 
become  new  by  revival ;  that  is  to  say,  its  fashion  was 
current  within  our  own  recollection  and  is  now  pass- 
ing away.  Some  forms  put  on  a  new  type  with  each 
successive  period,  such  as  blank-verse  and  the  irreg- 
ular ode-measures  in  which  Lowell,  Taylor,  and  Stod- 
dard have  been  successful.  Whittier  uses  these  rarely, 
and  to  less  advantage  than  his  ballad-verse.  He  has 
conformed  less  than  any  one  but  Holmes  to  the 
changes  of  the  day.  Imagine  him  with  an  etching- 
needle,  tracing  the  deft  lines  of  a  triolet  or  villanelle! 
If  he  could,  and  would,  it  would  be  seen  that  when 
one  leaves  a  natural  vein,  the  yield,  lacking  what  is 


EARLY  POEMS. 


Ill 


characteristic,  is  superfluous.  Even  his  recent  son- 
nets, "  Requirement,"  "  Help,"  etc.,  are  little  more 
than  fourteen-line  homilies.  Those  who  know  their 
author  find  something  of  him  in  them,  but  such  ef- 
forts do  not  reveal  him  to  a  new  acquaintance.  A 
poet's  voice  must  have  a  distinct  quality  to  be  heard 
above  the  general  choir. 

We  turn  to  his  early  verse,  as  still  acknowledged, 
to  see  in  what  direction  his  first  independent  step  was 
made,  and  we  note  an  effort  to  become  a  true  Amer- 
ican poet  —  to  concern  himself  with  the  story  and 
motive  of  his  own  land.  For  a  time  it  was  rather  in- 
effective. The  author  of  Mogg  Megone  and  The  Bridal 
of  Pennacook  was  on  the  *lfame~*trail  with  the  New 
York  squadron  that  sought  the  red  man's  path.  It 
is  queer,  at  this  distance,  to  see  the  methods  of  Scott 
and  Coleridge  applied  to  the  Indian  legendary  of 
Maine.  Among  works  of  this  sort,  however,  these 
were  the  best  preceding  "  Hiawatha."  Longfellow 
had  the  tact  to  perceive  that  if  the  savage  is  not  po- 
etical his  folk-lore  may  be  made  so.  The  prelude 
to  Whittier's  "  Bridal  "  is  quite  modern  and  natural. 
It  contains  a  suggestive  plea  that  this  experiment  in 
a  home  field  may  not  seem  amiss  even  to  those  who 
are  best  pleased 

"  while  wandering  in  thought, 
Pilgrims  of  Romance  o'er  the  olden  world." 

And,  after  all,  "  Mogg  "  was  a  planned  and  sustained 
effort,  and  full  of  promise.  Its  writer's  later  manage- 
ment of  local  themes  was  more  to  the  point.  The 
Songs  of  Labor  are  American  chiefly  in  topic,  —  in 
manner  they  are  much  like  what  Mackay  or  Massey 
might  have  written,  —  yet  they  became  popular,  and 
their  rhetorical  flow  adapted  them  to  recitation  in  the 


/  f 


112 


JOHN  GREENLEAF  WHITTIER. 


Indica- 
tions of  his 
true  bent. 


Our  fore- 
ptost  bal- 
ladist. 


country  schools.  The  poet's  distinctive  touch  first 
appears  in  the  legendary  ballads  which  now  precede 
the  "Voices  of  Freedom  "  in  his  late  editions.  "The 
New  Wife  and  the  Old  "  is  almost  our  best  specimen 
of  a  style  that  Mrs.  Hemans  affected,  and  which  Miss 
Ingelow,  Mrs.  Browning,  and  others  have  employed 
more  picturesquely.  It  is  a  weird  legend,  musically 
told,  and  clearly  the  lyric  of  a  poet.  The  early 
Quaker  pieces  are  as  good,  and  have  all  the  traits  of 
his  verse  written  forty  years  afterward.  His  first  bal- 
lads give  the  clew  to  his  genius,  and  now  make  it 
apparent  that  most  of  his  verse  may  be  considered 
without  much  regard  to  dates  of  production.  "  Cas- 
sandra Southwick,"  alone,  showed  where  his  strength 
lay :  of  all  our  poets  he  is  the  most  natural  balladist, 
and  Holmes  comes  next  to  him.  The  manner  of 
that  poem  doubtless  was  suggested  by  Macaulay's 
"  Battle  of  Ivry,"  and  nothing  could  better  serve  the 
purpose.  The  colonial  tone  is  well  maintained.  Here 
is  a  touching  picture  of  the  inspired  maid's  tempta- 
tion to  recant,  of  her  endurance,  trial,  and  victory. 
A  group,  also,  of  the  populace  —  cloaked  citizens, 
grave  and  cold,  hardy  sea  -  captains,  and  others  — 
gathered  where 

"on  his  horse,  with  Rawson,  his  cruel  clerk,  at  hand, 
Sat  dark  and  haughty  Endicott,  the  ruler  of  the  land." 

The  bigoted  priest,  a  "  smiter  of  the  meek,"  is  a 
type  that  was  to  reappear  in  our  poet's  scornful  in- 
dictments of  the  divines  who,  within  public  remem- 
brance, upheld  the  slavery  system  under  the  sanction 
of  Noah's  curse  of  Canaan.  This-  ballad  is  well-pro- 
portioned, and  thus  escapes  the  defect  of  "  The  Ex- 
iles," which  is  otherwise  a  good  piece  of  idiomatic 
verse. 


THE  BALLADIST. 


2%, 

113 


;^ 


On  the  whole,  it  is  as  a  balladist  that  Whittier  di 
plays   a   sure    metrical   instinct.      The   record   of  the 
Quakers   has  always  served   his  muse,  from  the   date 
of    "Cassandra  Southwick  "  to  the  recent   production 
of    "The    Old    South,"    "The    King's    Missive,"    and 
"  How  the  Women  went  from  Dover."     Neither  Ber- 
nard Barton  nor  Bayard  Taylor  is  so  well  entitled  to 
the  epithet  of  the  Quaker  Poet.     His  Quaker  strains, 
chanted  while   the   sect   is   slowly  blending  with   the 
world's  people,  seem  like   its  swan-song.     It  is  worth 
noting  that  of   the  nine  American  poets  discussed  in 
these   essays,  one   is  still   a   Friend,  and   two  others, 
Whitman  and  Taylor,  came  of   Quaker  parentage   on 
both   sides,    /the   strong  ballad,    "Barclay   of   Ury," 
would  be   almost  perfect  but  for  the   four  moralizing 
stanzas   at   the   close.     It   is   annoying   to  see   a  fine 
thing  lowered,  and  even  in  moral  effect,  by  an  offence 
against  the  ethics  of  art.     Whittier's  successes  prob- 
ably have  been  scored  most  often  through  ballads  of 
our  eastward   tradition   and   supernaturalism,   such  as 
those    pertaining   to    witchcraft,  —  a   province   which, 
from  "  Calef  in  Boston  "  to  "  The  Witch  of  Wenham," 
he  never  has  long  neglected.     Some  of  his  miscella- 
neous  ballads   are   idyllic  ;    others,    in    strong    relief, 
were  inspired  by  incidents  of  the  War,  during  which 
our  non-combatant  sounded  more  than  one  blast,  like 
that  of   Roderick,  worth   a  thousand  men.     His  bal- 
lads vary  as  much  in  excellence  as  in  kind  j  among 
the   most   noteworthy   are   "  Mary   Garvin,"    "  Parson 
Avery,"  "  John  Underhill,"  and  that  pure  bit  of  mel- 
ody and  feeling,  the  lay  of  "Marguerite."     Yet  some 
of   the   poems   which   he    classes   in   this   department 
properly  are  eclogues,  or  slow-moving  narratives.     He 
handles   well    a   familiar   measure  ;    when    aiming   at 
something  new,   as  in  "The    Ranger,"  he  usually  is 
8 


Ballads  on 

Quaker 

themes. 


Ballads  of 
witch- 
craft, 
colonial 
romance, 
etc. 


ii4 


JOHN  GREENLEAF   WHITTIER. 


u  Skiver 

Ireson's 

Ride." 


I1847.) 


"  The 
Tent  on 
the 

Beach," 
1867. 


1/ 


less  at  ease,  despite,  the  fact  that  the  nonpareil  of  his 
briefer  pieces  is  thoroughly  novel  in  form  and  refrain, 
and  doubtless  chanced  to  come  to  him  in  such  wise. 
"  Skipper  Ireson's  Ride "  certainly  is  unique.  Dia- 
lect-poems are  too  often  unfaithful  or  unpoetic  Im- 
agination, humor,  and  dramatic  force  are  found  in  the 
ballad  of  the  Marblehead  skipper's  dole,  and  its  move- 
ment is  admirable.  The  culmination  is  more  effec- 
tive than  is  usual  in  a  piece  by  Whittier.  We  have 
the  widow  of  the  skipper's  victim  saying  "  God  has 
touched  him!  why  should  we?"  —  an  old  dame,  whose 
only  son  has  perished,  bidding  them  "  Cut  the  rogue's 
tether  and  let  him  run  "  ;  and 

"  So,  with  soft  relentings  and  rude  excuse, 
Half  scorn,  half  pity,  they  cut  him  loose, 
And  gave  him  a  cloak  to  hide  him  in, 
And  left  him  alone  with  his  shame  and  sin. 
Poor  Floyd  Ireson,  for  his  hard  heart, 
Tarred  and  feathered  and  carried  in  a  cart 
By  the  women  of  Marblehead  ! " 

The  change  of  feeling  is  indicated  by  the  single  word 
"  poor."  This  is  only  a  minor  piece,  but  quantity  is 
the  plane,  and  quality  the  height,  of  lyrical  verse. 
Were  it  not  for  two  of  Collins's  briefest  poems,  where 
would  his  name  be? 

A  balladist  should  be  a  good  reciter  of  tales.  Our 
poet's  prose  work  on  The  Supernaturalism  of  Neiv 
England  was  devoted  to  the  ghost  and  witch  stories 
of  his  own  neighborhood.  In  general  design  his  chief 
story-book  in  verse,  The  Tent  on  the  Beach,  like  Long- 
fellow's "Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn," — the  first  series 
of  which  it  post-dated  and  did  not  equal,  —  follows 
the  oft-borrowed  method  of  Boccaccio  and  Chaucer. 
The  home  tales  of  this  group  are  the  best,  among  them 
"  The  Wreck  of  Rivermouth  "  and   "  Abraham  Daven- 


POEMS  OF  COUNTRY  LIFE. 


"5 


port."  Throw  out  a  ballad  or  two,  and,  but  for  a 
want  of  even  finish,  "  The  Tent  on  the  Beach  "  might 
be  taken  for  a  portion  of  Longfellow's  extended  work. 
As  a  bucolic  poet  of  his  own  section,  rendering  its 
pastoral  life  and  aspect,  Whittier  surpasses  all  rivals. 
This  is  established  chiefly  by  work  that  increased, 
after  he  reached  middle  age,  with  a  consciousness  of 
his  lost  youth.  In  some  breathing-spell  from  the 
stress  of  his  reform  labors,  he  longed  for  the  renewal 

of 

"boyhood's  painless  play, 
Sleep  that  wakes  in  laughing  day, 
Health  that  mocks  the  doctor's  rules, 
Knowledge  never  learned  of  schools." 

His  eye  fell  upon  the  Barefoot  Boy,  and  memory 
brought  back  a  time  when  he  too  was 

"rich  in  flowers  and  trees, 
Humming-birds  and  honey-bees." 

To  rate  the  country  life  at  its  worth,  one  must  have 
parted  from  it  long  enough  to  become  a  little  tired  of 
that  for  which  it  was  exchanged.  The  best  eclogues 
are  those  which,  however  simple,  have  a  feeling  added 
by  the  cast  of  thought.  Poets  hold  Nature  dear  when 
refined  above  her.  Goldsmith,  after  years  of  wander- 
ing ;  Burns,  when  too  well  acquainted  with  the  fickle 
world.  The  maker  of  rural  verse,  moreover,  should  be 
country-bred,  or  he  will  fall  short.  Unless  Nature  has 
been  his  nurse  in  childhood,  he  never  will  read  with 
ease  the  text  of  her  story-book.  The  distinction  be- 
tween artifice  and  sincerity  is  involved.  Watteau's 
pictures  are  exquisite  in  their  way,  but  Millet  gave  us 
the  real  thing.  Longfellow's  rural  pieces  were  done 
by  a  skilled  workman,  who  could  regard  his  themes 
objectively  and  put  them  to  good  use.  Lowell  delights 
in  outdoor  life,  and  his  Yankee  studies  are  perfect ; 


n6 


JOHN  GREENLEAF   WHITTIER. 


Whittier's 

pastoral 

spirit. 


still,  we  feel  that  he  is,  intellectually  and  socially,  miles 
above  the  people  of  the  vale.  Whittier  is  of  their 
blood,  and  always  the  boy-poet  of  the  Essex  farm, 
however  advanced  in  years  and  fame.  They  are  won 
by  the  sincerity  and  ingenuousness  of  his  verse,  rooted 
in  the  soil  and  native  as  the  fern  and  wild  rose  of  the 
wayside.  His  brother-poets  are  more  exact :  which  of 
them  would  hit  upon  "  Maud  "  as  a  typical  farm-girl's 
name  ?  But  incongruities  are  the  signs  manual  of  a 
rural  bard,  as  one  can  discover  from  Burns 's  high- 
sounding  letters  and  manifestoes.  Whittier  himself  de- 
spises a  sham  pastoral.  There  is  good  criticism,  a 
clear  sense  of  what  was  needed,  in  his  paper  on  Rob- 
ert Dinsmore,  the  old  Scotch  bard  of  his  childhood. 
He  says  of  rural  poetry  that  "the  mere  dilettante  and 
the  amateur  ruralist  may  as  well  keep  their  hands  off. 
The  prize  is  not  for  them.  He  who  would  success- 
fully strive  for  it  must  be  himself  what  he  sings,  — 
part  and  parcel  of  the  rural  life,  .  .  .  one  who  has 
added  to  his  book-lore  the  large  experience  of  an  ac- 
tive participation  in  the  rugged  toil,  the  hearty  amuse- 
ments, the  trials  and  pleasures  he  describes."  I  need 
not  dwell  upon  our  poet's  fidelity  to  the  landscape 
and  legends  of  the  Eastern  shore  and  the  vales  of 
the  Piscataqua  and  Merrimack.  Those  who  criticise 
his  pastoral  spirit  as  lacking  Bryant's  breadth  of  tone, 
Emerson's  penetration,  and  Thoreau's  detail,  confess 
that  it  is  honest  and  that  it  comes  by  nature.  His 
most  vivid  pictures  are  of  scenes  which  lie  near  his 
heart,  and  relate  to  common  life  —  to  the  love  and 
longing,  the  simple  joys  and  griefs,  of  his  neighbors 
at  work  and  rest  and  worship.  Lyrics  such  as  "  Tell- 
ing the  Bees,"  "  Maud  Muller,"  and  "  My  Playmate  " 
are  miniature  classics  j  of  this  kind  are  those  which 
confirmed  his  reputation  and  still  make  his  volumes 
real  household  books  of  song. 


'SNOW-BOUND. 


117 


These  rustic  verses,  as  we  have  seen,  came  like  the 
sound  of  falling  waters  to  jaded  men  and  women. 
Years  ago,  when  Snow-Bound  was  published,  I  was 
surprised  at  the  warmth  of  its  reception.  I  must  have 
underrated  it  in  every  way.  It  did  not  interest  one 
not  long  escaped  from  bounds,  to  whom  the  poetry  of 
action  then  was  all  in  all.  And  in  truth  such  poetry, 
conceived  and  executed  in  the  spirit  of  art,  is  of  the 
higher  grade.  But  I  now  can  see  my  mistake,  a  purely 
subjective  one,  and  do  justice  to  "  S now-Bound  "  as  a 
model  of  its  class.  Burroughs  well  avows  it  to  be  the 
"  most  faithful  picture  of  our  northern  winter  that  has 
yet  been  put  into  poetry."  If  his  discussion  had  not 
been  restricted  to  "  Nature  and  the  Poets,"  he  perhaps 
would  have  added  that  this  pastoral  gives,  and  once 
for  all,  an  ideal  reproduction  of  the  inner  life  of  an  old- 
fashioned  American  rustic  home  ;  not  a  peasant-home, 
—  far  above  that  in  refinement  and  potentialities, — 
but  equally  simple,  frugal,  and  devout ;  a  home  of 
which  no  other  land  has  furnished  the  coadequate  type. 

This  poem  is  not  rich  in  couplets  to  be  quoted  for 
their  points  of  phrase  and  thought.  Point,  decoration, 
and  other  features  of  modern  verse  are  scarcely  char- 
acteristic of  Whittier.  In  "  Snow-Bound  "  he  chose 
the  best  subject  within  his  own  experience,  and  he 
made  the  most  of  it.  Taken  as  a  whole,  it  is  his  most 
complete  production,  and  a  worthy  successor  to  "  The 
Deserted  Village"  and  "The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night." 
Here  is  that  air  which  writers  of  quality  so  often  fail  to 
capture.  "  Hermann  and  Dorothea,"  "  Enoch  Arden," 
even  "  Evangeline,"  memorable  for  beauty  of  another 
kind,  leave  the  impression  that  each  of  their  authors 
said,  as  Virgil  must  have  said,  "  And  now  I  will  com- 
pose an  idyl."  Whittier  found  his  idyl  already  pic- 
tured for  him  by  the  camera  of  his  own  heart.     It  is  a 


"Snow- 
Bound.    A 
Winter 
Idyl," 
1866. 


A  mong  the 
famous 
poems  of 
its  class. 


n8 


JOHN  GREENLEAF   WHITTIER. 


Realism. 


work  that  can  be  praised,  when  measured  by  others  of 
the  sort,  as  heartily  as  we  praise  the  "  Biglow  Papers  " 
or  "  Evangeline,"  and  one  that  ranks  next  to  them  as 
an  American  poem.  This  "  Winter  Idyl "  is  honestly 
named.  Under  the  title,  however,  is  a  passage  from 
Cornelius  Agrippa  on  the  "  Fire  of  Wood,"  followed 
by  Emerson's  matchless  heralding  of  the  snow-storm. 
Devices  of  this  kind  add  to  the  effect  of  such  a  poem, 
only,  as  "  The  Ancient  Mariner."  The  texts  are  need- 
less at  the  outset  of  a  work  whose  lovely  and  unlit- 
erary  cast  is  sufficient  in  itself.  From  the  key  struck 
at  the  opening  to  the  tender  fall  at  the  close,  there 
is  a  sense  of  proportion,  an  adequacy  and  yet  a  re- 
straint, not  always  observed  in  Whittier.  This  is  a 
sustained  performance  that  conforms  to  the  maxim  ne 
quid  nimis.  Its  genuineness  is  proved  by  a  severe  test, 
the  concord  with  which  imaginative  passages  glide 
into  homely,  realistic  verse : 

"  The  wind  blew  east :  we  heard  the  roar 
Of  Ocean  on  his  wintry  shore, 
And  felt  the  strong  pulse  throbbing  there 
Beat  with  low  rhythm  our  inland  air. 

"  Meanwhile  we  did  our  nightly  chores,  — 
Brought  in  the  wood  from  out  of  doors, 
Littered  the  stalls,  and  from  the  mows 
Raked  down  the  herd's-grass  for  the  cows ; 
Heard  the  horse  whinnying  for  his  cornj 
And,  sharply  clashing  horn  on  horn, 
Impatient  down  the  stanchion  rows 
The  cattle  shake  their  walnut  bows." 

The  gray  day  darkens  to 

"  A  night  made  hoary  with  the  swarm 
And  whirl-dance  of  the  blinding  storm; 

The  white  drift  piled  the  window-frame, 
And  through  the  glass  the  clothes-line  posts 
Looked  in  like  tall  and  sheeted  ghosts." 


A   DOWN-EAST  TENTERS. 


119 


The  poet's  child-vision  makes  this  fancy  natural  and 
not  grotesque.     The  whole  transfiguration  is  recalled  : 

"  The  old  familiar  sights  of  ours 
Took  marvellous  shapes;  strange  domes  and  towers 
Rose  up  where  sty  or  corn-crib  stood, 
Or  garden-wall,  or  belt  of  wood ; 

The  bridle-post  an  old  man  sat 

With  loose-flung  coat  and  high  cocked  hat ; 

The  well-curb  had  a  Chinese  roof; 

And  even  the  long  sweep,  high  aloof, 

In  its  slant  splendor,  seemed  to  tell 

Of  Pisa's  leaning  miracle." 

Imaginative  touches  follow : 

"The  shrieking  of  the  mindless  wind, 
The  moaning  tree-boughs  swaying  blind, 
And  on  the  glass  the  unmeaning  beat 
Of  ghostly  finger-tips  of  sleet. 

From  the  crest 
Of  wooded  knolls  that  ridged  the  west, 
The  sun,  a  snow-blown  traveller,  sank 
From  sight  beneath  the  smothering  bank." 

The  building  and  lighting  of  the  wood-fire,  the  hov- 
ering family  group  that 

"watched  the  first  red  blaze  appear, 
Heard  the  sharp  crackle,  caught  the  gleam 
On  whitewashed  wall  and  sagging  beam," 

the  rude-furnished  room  thus  glorified  and  transformed, 
while  even 

"The  cat's  dark  silhouette  on  the  wall 
A  couchant  tiger's  seemed  to  fall," — 

all  this  is  an  interior  painted  by  our  Merrimack  Te- 
niers.  His  hand  grows  free  in  artless  delineations  of 
each  sharer  of  the  charmed  blockade :  the  father,  with 
his  stories  of  woodcraft  and  adventure  ;  the  Quaker 
mother   rehearsing  tales   from   Sewell   and    Chalkley 


Fancy. 


Imagina- 
tion. 


A  graphic 
interior. 


120 


JOHN  GREENLEAF  WHITTIER. 


The  poet's 
master- 

tiece. 


"  of  faith  fire-winged  by  martyrdom  " ;  then  a  foil  to 
these,  the  unlettered  uncle  "  rich  in  lore  of  fields  and 

brooks," 

"A  simple,  guileless,  childlike  man, 
Content  to  live  where  life  began n ; 

the  maiden  aunt ;  the  elder  sister,  full  of  self  -  sacri- 
fice, a  true  New  England  girl;  lastly,  the  "youngest 
and  dearest,"  seated  on  the  braided  mat, 

"  Lifting  her  large,  sweet,  asking  eyes." 

The  guests  are  no  less  vividly  portrayed.  The  school- 
master, distinct  as  Goldsmith's,  is  of  an  original  type. 
The  group  is  completed,  with  an  instinct  for  color  and 
contrast,  by  the  introduction  of  a  dramatic  figure,  the 
half-tropical,  prophetic  woman,  who  was  born  to  startle, 

"on  her  desert  throne, 
The  crazy  Queen  of  Lebanon 
With  claims  fantastic  as  her  own." 

The  poem  returns  to  its  theme,  and  records  the  days 
of  farm-house  life  during  the  chill  embargo  of  the 
snow,  until 

"a  week  had  passed 
Since  the  great  world  was  heard  from  last." 

But  the  treading  oxen  break  out  the  highways,  the 
rustic  carnival  of  sledding  and  sleighing  is  at  hand, 

"  Wide  swung  again  our  ice-locked  door, 
And  all  the  world  was  ours  once  more." 

From  the  subject  thus  chosen  and  pursued,  an  un- 
adventured  theme  before,  our  poet  has  made  his  mas- 
terpiece. Its  readers  afterward  loved  to  hear  his  voice, 
whether  at  its  best  or  otherwise  ;  and  the  more  so 
for  his  pleased  and  assured  reflection, 

"And  thanks  untraced  to  lips  unknown 
Shall  greet  me  like  the  odors  blown 
From  unseen  meadows  newly  mown." 


ANTI-SLAVERY  LYRICS. 


121 


A  claim  that  he  has  found  and  preserved  in  fit  and 
winning  verse  the  poetic  aspect  of  his  own  section  can 
be  grounded  safely  on  this  idyl.  We  return  from  the 
work  in  which  his  taste  is  most  effectual  to  that  in- 
spired by  his  life-long  convictions.  It  is  in  this  that 
the  faults  heretofore  noted  are  most  common,  but  here 
also  his  natural  force  is  at  its  height,  and  results  from 
what  is  lacking  in  some  of  his  group  —  the  element 
of  passion.  The  verse  of  his  period,  especially  the 
New  England  verse,  is  barren  enough  of  this.  For 
what  there  was,  and  is,  of  love-poetry  we  must  look 
south  of  the  region  where  poets  are  either  too  fortunate 
or  too  self-controlled  to  die  because  a  woman  's  fair. 
The  song  of  the  Quaker  bard  is  almost  virginal,  in  so 
far  as  what  we  term  the  master-passion  is  concerned. 
Its  passion  comes  from  the  purpose  that  heated  his 
soul  and  both  strengthened  and  impeded  lyrical  expres- 
sion. Active  service  in  any  strife,  even  the  most  hu- 
mane, is  unrest,  and  therefore  hostile  to  the  perfection 
of  art.  But  the  conflict  often  engenders  in  its  cloud 
the  flash  of  eloquence  and  song.  Three-fourths  of 
Whittier's  anti-slavery  lyrics  are  clearly  effusions  of  the 
hour ;  their  force  was  temporal  rather  than  poetic. 
There  are  music  and  pathos  in  "  The  Virginia  Slave 
Mother,"  and  "The  Slave-Ships"  is  lurid  and  gro- 
tesque enough  to  have  furnished  Turner  with  his  theme. 
The  poet's  deep-voiced  scorn  and  invective  rendered 
his  anti-slavery  verse  a  very  different  thing  from  Long- 
fellow's, and  made  the  hearer  sure  of  his  "effectual 
calling."  Even  rhetoric  becomes  the  outburst  of  true 
passion  in  such  lines  as  these  upon  "  Elliott "  :  — 

"  Hands  off !  thou  tithe-fat  plunderer  !  play 
No  trick  of  priestcraft  here  ! 
Back,  puny  lordling  !  darest  thou  lay 
A  hand  on  Elliott's  bier?" 


The  pas- 
sion of  a 
fiery 
heart. 


122 


JOHN  GREENLEAF   WHITTIER. 


Personal 
lyrics. 


"Icha- 
bod." 


A  little  of  this,  however,  goes  quite  far  enough  in 
poetry.  As  a  writer  of  personal  tributes,  whether 
paeans  or  monodies,  the  reform  bard,  with  his  peculiar 
faculty  of  characterization,  has  been  happily  gifted. 
Scarcely  one  of  these  that  might  not  be  retouched  to 
advantage,  but  they  are  many  and  various  and  strik- 
ing. John  Randolph  lives  for  us  in  the  just  balanc- 
ing, the  masterly  and  sympathetic  portraiture,  of  Whit- 
tier's  fine  elegy.  Channing,  Elliott,  Pius  IX.,  Foster, 
Rantoul,  Kossuth,  Sumner,  Garibaldi,  —  all  these  his- 
toric personages  are  idealized  by  this  poet,  and  haloed 
with  their  spiritual  worth ;  his  tributes  are  a  lyrical 
commentary,  from  the  minstrel's  point  of  view,  upon 
an  epoch  now  gone  by.  The  wreath  his  aged  hands 
have  laid  upon  the  tomb  of  Garrison  is  a  beautiful 
and  consecrated  offering.  One  of  his  memorable  im- 
provisations was  "Ichabod,"  the  lament  for  Webster's 
defection  and  fall,  —  a  tragical  subject  handled  with 
lyric  power.  In  after  years,  his  passion  tempered  by 
the  flood  of  time,  he  breathes  a  tenderer  regret  in 
"  The  Lost  Occasion  "  :  — 

"  Thou  shouldst  have  lived  to  feel  below 
Thy  feet  Disunion's  fierce  upthrow, — 
The  late-sprung  mine  that  underlaid 
Thy  sad  concessions  vainly  made. 

Ah,  cruel  fate,  that  closed  to  thee, 

O  sleeper  by  the  Northern  sea, 

The  gates  of  opportunity  !  " 
But  the  conception  of  "  Ichabod  "  is  most  impressive  ; 
those  darkening  lines  were  graven  too  deeply  for  ob- 
literation. In  thought  we  still  picture  the  deserted 
leader,  the  shadow  gathering  about  his  "  august  head," 
while  he  reads  such  words  as  these  :  — 

"  All  else  is  gone  ;  from  those  great  eyes 
The  soul  has  fled : 


RELIGIOUS  EXALTATION. 


I23 


When  faith  is  lost,  when  honor  dies, 
The  man  is  dead. 

*  Then,  pay  the  reverence  of  old  days 
To  his  dead  fame  ; 
Walk  backward,  with  averted  gaze, 
And  hide  the  shame  !  " 

Among  our  briefer  poems  on  topics  of  dramatic  gen- 
eral interest,  I  recall  but  one  which  equals  this  in  ef- 
fect, —  and  that,  coming  from  a  hand  less  familiar 
than  Whittier's,  is  now  almost  unknown.  I  refer  to 
the  "  Lines  on  a  Great  Man  Fallen,"  written  by  Wil- 
liam W.  Lord,  after  the  final  defeat  of  Clay,  and  in 
scorn  of  the  popular  judgment  that  to  be  defeated 
is  to  fall.  The  merit  of  this  eloquent  piece  has  been 
strangely  overlooked  by  the  makers  of  our  literary 
compilations. 

It  is  matter  of  history  that  our  strictest  clerical 
monitors,  during  the  early  struggle  for  abolition,  op- 
posed agitation  of  the  slavery  question,  and  often  with 
a  rancor  that  Holy  Willie  might  envy.  Not  even  this 
one-sided  odium  theologicum  could  long  debar  Whit- 
tier  from  the  respect  of  the  church-going  classes,  for  he 
is  the  most  religious  of  secular  poets,  and  there  is  no 
gainsaying  to  a  believer  the  virtues  of  one  who  guides 
his  course  by  the  life  and  teachings  of  Jesus  Christ. 
A  worshipful  spirit,  a  savor  "  whose  fragrance  smells  to 
heaven,"  breathes  from  these  pages  of  the  Preacher- 
Poet's  song.  The  devotional  bent  of  our  ancestors 
was  the  inheritance  of  his  generation.  Domesticity, 
patriotism,  and  religion  were,  and  probably  still  are, 
American  characteristics  often  determining  an  author's 
success  or  failure.  A  reverent  feeling,  emancipated 
from  dogma  and  imbued  with  grace,  underlies  the 
wholesome  morality  of  our  national  poets.  No  country 
has  possessed  a  group,  equal  in  talent,  that  has  pre- 


Deep  relig- 
ious feel- 
ing. 


Morality 
of  Amer- 
ican verse. 


124 


JOHN  GREENLEAF   WHIT.TIER. 


I 


A  poet  mil- 
itant and 
minis- 
trant. 


sented  more  willingly  whatsoever  things  are  pure, 
lovely,  and  of  good  report.  There  is  scientific  value  in 
an  influence,  during  a  race's  formative  period,  so  clar- 
ifying to  the  general  conscience.  We  have  no  proof 
that  the  unmorality  of  a  people  like  the  French,  with 
exquisite  resources  at  command,  can  evolve  an  art  or 
literature  greater  than  in  the  end  may  result  from  the 
virile  chastity  of  the  Saxon  mind.  Whittier  is  the  Gal- 
ahad of  modern  poets,  not  emasculate,  but  vigorous 
and  pure  ;  he  has  borne  Christian's  shield  of  faith  and 
sword  of  the  Spirit.  His  steadfast  insistence  upon 
the  primitive  conception  of  Christ  as  the  ransomer  of 
the  oppressed  had  an  effect,  stronger  than  argument  or 
partisanship,  upon  the  religiously  inclined ;  and  of  his 
lyrics,  more  than  of  those  by  his  fellow-poets,  it  could 
be  averred  that  the  songs  of  a  people  go  before  the 
laws.  Undoubtedly  a  flavor  smacking  of  the  caucus, 
the  jubilee,  and  other  adjuvants  of  "  the  cause "  is 
found  in  some  of  his  polemic  strains  ;  but  again  they 
are  like  the  trumpeting  of  passing  squadrons,  or  the 
muffled  drum -beat  for  chieftains  fallen  in  the  fray. 
The  courage  that  endures  the  imputation  of  coward- 
ice, as  in  "  Barclay  of  Ury,"  the  suffering  of  man  for 
man,  the  cry  of  the  human,  never  fail  to  move  him. 
He  celebrates  all  brave  deeds  and  acts  of  renuncia- 
tion. The  heroism  of  martyrs  and  resistants,  of  the 
Huguenots,  the  Vaudois,  the  Quakers,  the  English  re- 
formers, serves  him  for  many  a  song  and  ballad.  J  At 
every  pause  after  some  new  devotion,  after  some  su- 
preme offering  by  one  of  his  comrades,  it  was  the 
voice  of  Whittier  that  sang  the  paean  and  the  requiem. 
His  cry,  — 

"  Thou  hast  fallen  in  thine  armor, 
Thou  martyr  of  the  Lord  !  " 

compares  with   TurgeniefFs    thought   of   the    Russian 


PRAYER  AND  PRAISE. 


125 


maiden  crossing  the  threshold  of  dishonor  and  mar- 
tyrdom, the  crowd  crying  "  Fool !  "  without,  while  from 
within  and  above  a  rapturous  voice  utters  the  words, 
"  Thou  saint !  "  His  sympathy  flows  to  prisoners, 
emancipationists,  throughout  the  world ;  and  in  "  The 
May-Flower "  he  has  a  lurking  kindness  even  for  the 
Puritans,  —  but  of  the  sort  that  Burns  extends  to 
Auld  Hornie.  This  compassion  reaches  a  climax  in 
the  lyric  of  the  two  angels  who  are  commissioned  to 
ransom  hell  itself.  The  injunction  to  beware  of  the 
man  of  one  book  applies  to  the  poet  whose  Bible  was 
interpreted  for  him  by  a  Quaker  mother.  Its  letter 
rarely  is  absent  from  his  verse,  and  its  spirit  never. 
His  hymns,  than  which  he  composes  nothing  more 
spontaneously,  are  so  many  acts  of  faith.  The  eman- 
cipationists certainly  fought  with  the  sword  in  one 
hand  and  the  Bible  in  the  other,  —  and  Whittier's 
hymns  were  on  their  lips.  The  time  came  when  these 
were  no  longer  of  hope,  but  of  thanksgiving.  Often 
his  sacred  numbers,  such  as  the  "Invocation,"  have 
a  sonorous  effect  and  positive  strength  of  feeling.  It 
was  by  the  common  choice  of  our  poets  that  he  wrote 
the  "  Centennial  Hymn  "  ;  no  one  else  would  venture 
where  the  priest  of  song  alone  should  go.  The  com- 
position begins  imposingly  :  — 

"  Our  fathers'  God  !  from  out  whose  hand 
The  centuries  fall  like  grains  of  sand  " ; 

and  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  a  poem  for  sacred  music, 
or  for  such  an  occasion,  could  be  more  adequately 
wrought. 

His  occasional  and  personal  pieces  reveal  his  tran- 
scendental habit  of  thought.  We  find  him  imagining 
the  after-life  of  the  good,  the  gifted,  the  maligned. 
The  actuality  of  his  conceptions  is  impressive  :  — 


Hymns  0/ 
prayer  ^ 

and 
praise. 


Transcen- 
dental 
spirit. 


126 


JOHN  GREENLEAF   WHITTIER. 


A  n  abid- 
ing mood. 


"  I  have  friends  in  spirit-land ; 
Not  shadows  in  a  shadowy  band, 
Not  others,  but  themselves,  are  they." 

The  change  is  only  one  from  twilight  into  dawn 

"  Thou  livest,  Follen  !  —  not  in  vain 
Hath  thy  fine  spirit  meekly  borne 
The  burthen  of  Life's  cross  of  pain." 


he  thus  invokes  a  sister  of 


And  in  "  Snow-Bound 
his  youth  :  — 

"  And  yet,  dear  heart,  remembering  thee, 
Am  I  not  richer  than  of  old  ? 
Safe  in  thy  immortality, 
What  change  can  reach  the  wealth  I  hold  ?  " 

Whittier's  religious  mood  is  far  from  being  super- 
ficial and  temporary.  It  is  the  life  of  his  genius,  out 
of  which  flow  his  ideas  of  earthly  and  heavenly  con- 
tent. In  outward  observance  he  is  loyal  to  the  sim- 
ple ways  of  his  own  sect,  and  still  a  frequenter  of  the 
Meeting,  where  — 

"from  the  silence  multiplied 
By  these  still  forms  on  either  side, 
The  world  that  time  and  sense  have  known 
Falls  off  and  leaves  us  God  alone." 

God  should  be  most,  he  says, — 

"  where  man  is  least ; 
So,  where  is  neither  church  nor  priest, 
And  never  rag  of  form  or  creed 
To  clothe  the  nakedness  of  need, — 
Where  farmer-folk  in  silence  meet, — 
I  turn  my  bell-unsummoned  feet." 

He  clings  in  this  wise  to  the  formal  formlessness  of 
the  Quakers,  as  he  would  cling,  doubtless,  to  the 
usages  of  any  church  in  which  he  had  been  bred,  pro- 
vided that  its  creed  rested  upon  the  cardinal  doctrines 
of  the  Master.     Channing  seemed  to  him  a  hero  and 


THE  INWARD  LIGHT. 


I27 


saint,  with  whom  he  could  enter  into  full  commun- 
ion: — 

"No  bars  of  sect  or  clime  were  felt, — 

The  Babel  strife  of  tongues  had  ceased, — 
And  at  one  common  altar  knelt 
The  Quaker  and  the  priest" 

With  this  liberal  inclusion  of  all  true  worshippers,  he 
is  so  much  the  more  impatient  of  clerical  bigotry. 
"  Woe  unto  you,  scribes  and  Pharisees,  hypocrites  !  " 
has  been  often  on  his  lips,  —  sometimes  the  outbreak 
of  downright  wrath,  — 

"  Woe  to  the  priesthood  !  woe 
To  those  whose  hire  is  with  the  price  of  blood,— 
Perverting,  darkening,  changing,  as  they  go, 

The  searching  truths  of  God  ! " 

at  other  times  varied  with  grim  and  humorous  con- 
tempt, as  in  "The  Pastoral  Letter"  and  "The  Hasch- 
ish  "  ;  and  never  more  effectively  than  in  the  vivid  and 
stinging  ballad  of  the  fugitive  slave-girl,  captured  in 
the  house  of  God,  in  spite  of  tearful  and  defying 
women's  eyes,  and  of  the  stout  hands  that  rise  be- 
tween "  the  hunter  and  the  flying."  Down  comes  the 
parson,  bowing  low  :  — 

"  Of  course  I  know  your  right  divine 
To  own  and  work  and  whip  her ; 
Quick,  deacon,  throw  that  Polyglot 
Before  the  wench,  and  trip  her ! " 

The  basic  justification  of  Whittier's  religious  trust 
appears  to  be  the  "  inward  light "  vouchsafed  to  a 
nature  in  which  the  prophet  and  the  .poet  are  one. 
This  solvent  of  doubt  removes  him  alike  from  the 
sadness  of  Clough  and  Arnold  and  the  paganism  of 
certain  other  poets.  In  the  striking  "Questions  of 
Life,"  a  piece  which  indicates  'his  highest  intellectual 
mark    and   is   in  affinity  with  some  of  Emerson's  dis- 


Scorn  of 
bigotry. 


K 


The  "  /'*- 

-ward 

light." 


128 


JOHN  GREEN  LEAF   WHITTIER. 


Faith,  es- 
sential to 
the  highest 
art. 


A  merican 
poets,  as 
person- 


course,  he  fairly  confronts  his  own  share  of  our  mod- 
ern doubts  j  questioning  earth,  air,  and  heaven  ;  per- 
plexed with  the  mystery  of  our  alliance  to  the  upper 
and  lower  worlds;  asking  what  is  this 

"  centred  self,  which  feels  and  is  ; 
A  cry  between  the  silences." 

He  finds  no  resource  but  to  turn  from 

"book  and  speech  of  men  apart 
To  the  still  witness  in  my  heart." 

His  repose  must  come  from  the  direction  in  which 
the  Concord  transcendentalists  also  have  sought  for 
it,  the  soul's  temple  irradiated  by  the  presence  of  the 
inward  light.  I  have  seen  a  fervent  expression  of 
this  belief,  in  a  voluntary  letter  of  Whittier's,  to  a 
poet  who  had  written  an  ode  concerning  intuition  as 
the  refuge  of  the  baffled  investigator.  In  fine,  the 
element  of  faith  gives  a  tone  to  the  whole  range  of 
his  verse,  both  religious  and  secular,  and  more  dis- 
tinctively than  to  the  work  of  any  other  living  poet 
of  equal  reputation.  What  he  has  achieved,  then,  is 
greatly  due  to  a  force  which  is  the  one  thing  needful 
in  modern  life  and  art.  Faith,  of  some  kind,  in  things 
as  they  are  or  will  be,  has  elevated  all  great  works 
of  human  creation.  The  want  of  it  is  felt  in  that  in- 
sincere treatment  which  weakens  the  builder's,  the 
painter's,  and  the  poet's  appeal;  since  faith  leads  to 
rapture  and  that  to  exaltation,  —  the  passio  vera,  with- 
out which  art  gains  no  hold  upon  the  senses  and  the 
souls  of  men. 


The  leaders  of  our  recent  poetic   movement,  with 
the   exception   of   Longfellow,  —  who,   like   Tennyson 


COMPARED    TO  MRS.  BROWNING. 


129 


and  Browning,  devoted  himself  wholly  to  ideal  work, 
—  seem  to  have  figured  more  distinctively  as  person- 
ages, in  both  their  lives  and  writings,  than  their  Eng- 
lish contemporaries.  This  remark  certainly  applies  to 
Poe,  Emerson,  Whitman,  Holmes,  and  Lowell,  and  to 
none  more  clearly  than  to  the  subject  of  this  review. 
His  traits,  moreover,  have  begotten  a  sentiment  of 
public  affection,  which,  from  its  constant  manifesta- 
tion, is  not  to  be  overlooked  in  any  judgment  of  his 
career.  In  recognition  of  a  beautiful  character,  critics 
have  not  found  it  needful  to  measure  this  native  bard 
with  tape  and  calipers.  His  service  and  the  spirit  of 
it  offset  the  blemishes  which  it  is  their  wont  to  con- 
demn in  poets  whose  exploits  are  merely  technical. 
A  life  is  on  his  written  page  ;  these  are  the  chants  of 
a  soldier,  and  anon  the  hymnal  of  a  saint.  Contem- 
porary honor  is  not  the  final  test,  but  it  has  its 
proper  bearingr — as  in  the  case  of  Mrs.  Browning, 
whom  I, have  called  the  most  beloved  of  English  poets. 
Whittier's  audience  has  been  won  by  unaffected  pic- 
tures of  the  scenes  to  which  he  was  bred,  by  the  pu- 
rity of  his  nature,  and  even  more  by  the  earnestness 
audible  in  his  songs,  injurious  as  it  sometimes  is  to 
their  artistic  purpose.  Like  the  English  sibyl,  he  has 
obeyed  the  heavenly  vision,  and  the  verse  of  poets 
who  still  trust  their  inspiration  has  its  material,  as 
well  as  spiritual,  ebb  and  flow. 

It  must  be  owned  that  Goethe's  calm  distinction 
between  the  poetry  of  humanity  and  that  of  a  high 
ideal  is  fully  illustrated  in  Whittier's  reform-verse. 
Yet  even  his  failings  have  "leaned  to  virtue's  side." 
Those  who  gained  strength  from  his  music  to  endure 
defeat  and  obloquy  cherish  him  with  a  devotion  be- 
yond measure.  For  his  righteous  and  tender  heart 
they  would  draw  him  with  their  own  hands,  over  paths 
9 


130 


JOHN  GREENLEAF   WHITTIER. 


Pro  arise t 
focis. 


strewed  with  lilies,  to  a  shrine  of  peace  and  remem- 
brance. They  comprehend  his  purpose  —  that  he  has 
"  tried  to  make  the  world  a  little  better,  ...  to  awaken 
a  love  of  freedom,  justice,  and  good  will,"  and  to  have 
his  name,  like  Ben  Adhem's,  enrolled  as  of  "  one  that 
loved  his  fellow-men."  In  their  opinion  a  grace  is 
added  to  his  poetry  by  the  avowal,  "  I  set  a  higher 
value  on  my  name  as  appended  to  the  Anti-Slavery 
Declaration  of  1833,  than  on  the  title-page  of  my 
book." 

Our  eldest  living  poet,  then,  is  canonized  already 
by  his  people  as  one  who  left  to  silence  his  personal 
experience,  yet  entered  thoroughly  into  their  joy  and 
sorrow ;  who  has  been,  like  a  celibate  priest,  the  con- 
soler of  the  hearts  of  others  and  the  keeper  of  his 
own ;  who  has  best  known  the  work  and  feeling  of 
the  humble  household,  and  whose  legend  manifestly 
is  pro  arts  et  focis.  He  has  stood  for  New  England, 
also,  in  his  maintenance  of  her  ancient  protest  against 
tyranny.  He  is  the  veteran  of  an  epoch  that  can 
never  recur;  that  scarcely  can  be  equalled,  however 
significant  future  periods  may  seem  from  the  artist's 
point  of  view.  The  primitive  life,  the  old  struggle  for 
liberty,  are  idealized  in  his  strains.  Much  of  both  his 
strength  and  incompleteness  is  due  to  his  Hebraic 
nature;  for  he  is  the  incarnation  of  Biblical  heroism, 
of  the  moral  energy  that  breathed  alike,  through  a 
cycle  of  change  from  dogma  to  reason,  in  Hooker, 
Edwards,  Parker,  Garrison,  and  Emerson.  In  his 
outbursts  against  oppression  and  his  cries  unto  the 
Lord,  we  recognize  the  prophetic  fervor,  still  nearer 
its  height  in  some  of  his  personal  poems,  which  pop- 
ular instinct  long  ago  attributed  to  him.  Not  only  of 
Ezekiel,  but  also  of  himself,  he  chanted  in  that  early 
time  of  anointment  and  consecration  :  — 


'AD    VATEM. 


"The  burden  of  a  prophet's  power 
Fell  on  me  in  that  fearful  hour  ; 
From  off  unutterable  woes 
The  curtain  of  the  future  rose; 
I  saw  far  down  the  coming  time 
The  fiery  chastisement  of  crime  ; 
With  noise  of  mingling  hosts,  and  jar 
Of  falling  towers  and  shouts  of  war, 
I  saw  the  nations  rise  and  fall, 
Like  fire-gleams  on  my  tent's  white  wall." 

Oliver  Johnson's  tribute,  a  complement  to  Park- 
man's,  paid  honor  to  "  The  Prophet  Bard  of  America, 
poet  of  freedom,  humanity,  and  religion ;  whose  words 
of  holy  fire  aroused  the  conscience  of  a  guilty  nation, 
and  melted  the  fetters  of  the  slaves."  This  eulogy 
from  a  comrade  is  the  sentiment  of  a  multitude  in 
whose  eyes  their  bard  seems  almost  transfigured  by 
the  very  words  that  might  be  soonest  forgotten  if  pre- 
cious for  their  poetry  alone.  I  confess  to  my  own 
share  of  this  feeling.  It  may  be  that  he  has  thought 
too  little  of  the  canons  which  it  is  our  aim  to  discover 
and  illustrate  j  yet  it  was  to  him  above  all  that  the 
present  writer  felt  moved  to  dedicate  a  volume  with  the 
inscription    "  Ad  Vatem,"    and  to  invoke  for  Whittier 

"the  Land  that  loves  thee,  her  whose  child 
Thou  art,  —  and  whose  uplifted  hands  thou  long 
Hast  stayed  with  song  availing  like  a  prayer." 

For  surely  no  aged  servant,  his  eyes  having  seen  in 
good  time  the  Lord's  salvation,  ever  was  more  en- 
dowed with  the  love  and  reverence  of  a  chosen  peo- 
ple. They  see  him  resting  in  the  country  of  Beulah, 
and  there  solacing  himself  for  a  season.  From  this 
comfortable  land,  where  the  air  is  sweet  and  pleasant 
(and  he  is  of  those  who  here  have  "met  abundance 
of  what  they  had  sought  for  in  all  their  pilgrimage  "), 


The 

Prophet 

Bard. 


132 


JOHN  GREENLEAF   WHITTIER. 


they  are  not  yet  willing  to  have  him  seek  the  Golden 
City  of  his  visions,  but  would  fain  adjure  him, — 

"  And  stay  thou  with  us  long  !  vouchsafe  us  long 
This  brave  autumnal  presence,  ere  the  hues 
Slow-fading,  ere  the  quaver  of  thy  voice, 
The  twilight  of  thine  eye,  move  men  to  ask 
Where  hides  the  chariot,  — in  what  sunset  vale, 
Beyond  thy  chosen  river,  champ  the  steeds 
That  wait  to  bear  thee  skyward." 


CHAPTER  V. 


RALPH   WALDO   EMERSON. 


I. 

THE  grasses  had  scarcely  taken  root  on  Emer- 
son's grave  among  the  pines  when  a  discussion 
of  his  genius  began,  to  which  so  many  have  contrib- 
uted, that  we  already  are  asking  Lowell's  question 
concerning  Shakespeare,  —  Can  anything  new  be  said 
of  him  ?  One  thing,  it  seems  to  me,  may  be  said,  at 
least  in  a  new  way  and  as  a  clew  to  his  work  as  a 
poet.  While,  of  all  his  brotherhood,  he  is  the  radi- 
ant exemplar  of  his  own  statement,  that  in  spirit  "  the 
true  poet  and  the  true  philosopher  are  one,"  never- 
theless, of  all  verse  his  own  shows  most  clearly  that 
the  Method  of  the  poet  not  only  is  not  one  with  that 
of  the  philosopher,  but  is  in  fact  directly  opposed  to 
it.  The  poet,  as  an  artist,  does  not  move  in  the  di- 
rection which  was  Emerson's  by  instinct  and  selec- 
tion. The  Ideal  philosophy  scrutinizes  every  phase 
of  Nature  to  find  the  originating  sense,  the  universal 
soul,  the  pure  identity  j  it  follows  Nature's  trails  to 
their  common  beginning,  inverting  her  process  of  evo- 
lution, working  back  from  infinite  variety  to  the  pri- 
mal unity.  This,  too,  is  the  spirit  of  the  poet, —  to 
find  the  soul  of  things.  But  in  method  he  is  an  ar- 
tist:  his  poetry  is  an  art  that  imitates  Nature's  own 
habit.  He  works  from  unity  to  countless  results  and 
formations,  from  the  pure  thought  to  visible  symbols, 


A  clew  to 
his  work 
as  a  poet. 


Difference 
between 
artistic 
and  philo- 
sophic pro- 
cesses. 


134 


RALPH   WALDO  EMERSON. 


A  combi- 
nation. 


Idealprose 
and  verse. 


His  nat- 
ural disci- 
ties. 


from  the  ideal  to  the  concrete.  As  a  poet,  Emerson 
found  himself  in  a  state,  not  of  distraction,  but  often 
of  indecision,  between  the  methods  of  philosophy  and 
art.  To  bear  this  in  mind  is  to  account  more  read- 
ily for  the  peculiar  beauties  and  deficiencies  of  his 
verse,  —  and  thus  to  accept  it  as  it  is,  and  not  with- 
out some  understanding  of  its  value. 

Hermann  Grimm  recurs  to  the  dispute  whether  our 
sage  was  a  poet,  a  philosopher,  or  a  prophet.  The 
fact  is  that  he  was  born  with  certain  notes  of  song  j 
he  had  the  poet's  eye  and  ear,  and  was  a  poet  just 
so  far  as,  being  a  philosopher,  he  accepted  poetry  as 
the  expression  of  thought  in  its  rare  and  prophetic 
moods,  and  just  so  far  as,  in  exquisite  moments,  he 
had  the  mastery  of  this  form  of  expression. 

Emerson's  prose  is  full  of  poetry,  and  his  poems 
are  light  and  air.  But  this  statement,  like  so  many 
of  his  own,  gives  only  one  side  of  a  truth.  His  prose 
is  just  as  full  of  every-day  sense  and  wisdom  ;  and 
something  different  from  prose,  however  sublunary 
and  imaginative,  is  needed  to  constitute  a  poem. 
His  verse,  often  diamond-like  in  contrast  with  the 
feldspar  of  others,  at  times  is  ill-cut  and  beclouded. 
His  prose,  then,  is  that  of  a  wise  man,  plus  a  poet ; 
and  his  verse,  by  turns,  light  and  twilight,  air  and 
vapor.  Yet  we  never  feel,  as  in  reading  Wordsworth, 
that  certain  of  his  measures  are  wholly  prosaic.  He 
was  so  careless  of  ordinary  standards,  that  few  of  his 
own  craft  have  held  his  verse  at  its  worth.  It  is  said 
that  his  influence  was  chiefly,  like  that  of  Socrates, 
upon  the  sensitive  and  young,  and  such  is  the  case 
with  all  fresh  influences  J  but  I  take  it  that  those  who 
have  fairly  assimilated  Emerson's  poetry  in  their  youth 
have  been  not  so  much  born  poets  as  born  thinkers 
of   a  poetic  cast.     It   is  inevitable,  and   partakes   of 


POET  AND    THINKER. 


I  35 


growth  by  exercise,  that  poets  in  youth  should  value 
a  master's  sound  and  color  and  form,  rather  than  his 
priceless  thought.  They  are  drawn  to  the  latter  by 
the  former,  or  not  at  all.  Yet  when  poets,  even  in 
this  day  of  refinement,  have  served  their  technical  ap- 
prenticeship, the  depth  and  frequent  splendor  of  Em- 
erson's verse  grow  upon  them.  They  half  suspect 
that  he  had  the  finest  touch  of  all  when  he  chose  to 
apply  it.  It  becomes  a  question  whether  his  discords 
are  those  of  an  undeveloped  artist,  or  the  sudden 
craft  of  one  who  knows  all  art  and  can  afford  to  be 
on  easy  terms  with  it.  I  think  there  is  evidence  on 
both  sides; — that  he  had  seasons  when  feeling  and 
expression  were  in  circuit,  and  others  when  the  wires 
were  down,  and  that  he  was  as  apt  to  attempt  to 
send  a  message  at  one  time  as  at  the  other.  But  he 
suggested  the  subtilty  and  swiftness  of  the  soul's 
reach,  even  when  he  failed  to  sustain  it. 

I  have  said  that  of  two  poets,  otherwise  equal,  the 
one  who  acquires  the  broadest  knowledge  will  draw 
ahead  of  him  who  only  studies  his  art,  and  the  poet 
who  thinks  most  broadly  and  deeply  will  draw  ahead 
of  all.  There  can  be  little  doubt  of  Emerson  as  a 
thinker,  or  as  a  poet  for  thinkers  satisfied  with  a  deep 
but  abstract  and  not  too  varied  range.  Yet  he  did 
not  use  his  breadth  of  culture  and  thought  to  diver- 
sify the  purpose,  form,  symbolism,  of  his  poems. 
They  are  mostly  in  one  key.  They  teach  but  one 
lesson  ;  that,  to  be  sure,  is  the  first  and  greatest  of 
all,  but  they  fail  to  present  it,  after  Nature's  method, 
in  many  forms  of  living  and  beautiful  interest,  —  to 
exemplify  it  in  action,  and  thus  bring  it  within  uni- 
versal sympathy.  That  this  should  be  so  was,  I  say, 
inevitable  from  the  field  of  Emerson's  research,  — 
that  of  pure  rather  than  of  applied  philosophy.     Thus 


A  t  times 
the  fittest 
touch  of 
all. 


A  single 
thought 
conveyed^ 
but  that  tin 
greatest. 


136 


RALPH   WALDO  EMERSON. 


Essential- 
ly a  poet. 


An  apt 
paradox. 


far,  however,  he  represents  Thought  in  any  adjust- 
ment of  our  poetic  group,  and  furthermore,  —  his 
thought  being  independent  and  emancipatory,  —  the 
American  conflict  with  superstition,  with  servility  to 
inherited  usage  and  opinion. 

We  shall  see  that  he  had  himself  a  noble  and  com- 
prehensive ideal  of  what  a  typical  poet  should  be, 
and  was  aware  that  his  own  song  fell  short  of  it. 
Still,  he  called  himself  a  poet,  and  the  consent  of  the 
best  minds  has  sustained  him  in  his  judgment.  His 
prose  alone,  as  Lowell  said,  showed  that  he  was  es- 
sentially a  poet;  another  with  reason  declared  of  his 
spoken  essays  that  they  were  "not  so  much  lectures 
as  grave  didactic  poems,  theogonies,"  adorned  with 
"  odes  "  and  "  eclogues."  Thirty  years  later  a  cool 
and  subtile  writer  looks  back  to  find  them  the  "most 
poetical,  the  most  beautiful,  productions  of  the  Amer- 
ican mind."  For  once  the  arbiters  agree,  except  in 
a  question  akin  to  the  dispute  whether  all  things  con- 
sist solely  of  spirit  or  solely  of  matter.  Common 
opinion  justified  Mr.  Sanborn's  fine  paradox  that,  in- 
stead of  its  being  settled  that  Emerson  could  not 
write  poetry,  it  was  settled  that  he  could  write  noth- 
ing else.  We  know  his  distaste  for  convention,  his 
mistrust  of  "  tinkle  "  and  "  efficacious  rhymes."  But 
his  gift  lifted  him  above  his  will ;  even  while  throw- 
ing out  his  grapnel,  clinging  to  prose  as  the  firm 
ground  of  his  work,  he  rose  involuntarily  and  with 
music.  And  it  well  may  be  that  at  times  he  wrote 
verse  as  an  avowal  of  his  nativity,  and  like  a  noble 
privileged  to  use  the  language  of  the  court.  Cer- 
tainly he  did  not  restrict  himself  to  the  poet's  calling 
with  the  loyalty  of  Tennyson  and  Longfellow.  In 
verse,  however  careful  of  his  phrase,  he  was  some- 
thing of  a  rhapsodist,  not  apt  to  gloss  his  revelations 


THE  GREAT  MAN'S  INTELLECT. 


137 


and  exhortings  with  the  nice  perfection  of  those  oth- 
ers. He  must  be  reviewed  as  one  whose  verse  and 
parable  and  prophecy  alike  were  means  to  an  end,  — 
that  end  not  art,  but  the  enfranchisement  and  stimu- 
lation of  his  people  and  his  time.  When  Longfellow, 
the  poet  of  graceful  art  and  of  sympathy  as  tender 
as  his  voice,  took  his  departure,  there  went  up  a  cry 
as  from  a  sense  of  fireside  loss.  People  everywhere 
dwelt  upon  the  story  of  his  life  and  recalled  his  folk- 
songs. Emerson  glided  away  almost  unperceived  un- 
der the  shadow  of  the  popular  bereavement.  But 
soon,  and  still  multiplying  from  the  highest  sources, 
tributes  to  his  genius  began  to  appear,  —  searching, 
studying,  expounding  him,  —  as  when  a  grand  nature, 
an  originating  force,  has  ceased  to  labor  for  us.  This 
is  the  best  of  fame  :  to  impress  the  selected  minds, 
which  redistribute  the  effect  in  steadfast  circles  of  ex- 
tension. More  than  his  associates,  Emerson  achieved 
this  fame.  He  had  the  great  man's  intellect,  which, 
according  to  Landor,  "  puts  in  motion  the  intellect  of 
others."  He  was,  besides,  so  rare  a  personage,  that^ 
one  who  seeks  to  examine  his  writings  apart  from  the 
facts  and  conduct  of  his  life  needs  must  wander  off 
in  contemplation  of  the  man  himself.  Yet  anything 
that  others  can  write  of  him  is  poor  indeed  beside  a 
collect  of  his  own  golden  sayings.  He  felt  his  work 
to  be  its  own  and  best  interpreter,  and  of  recent  au- 
thors who  have  justly  held  this  feeling  he  doubtless 
was  the  chief. 

II. 

His  writings,  then,  are  the  key  to  his  biography  — 
the  scroll  of  a  life  which,  as  for  essential  matter,  and 
as  he  said  of  Plato's,  was  chiefly  "interior."  To 
quote  his  own  language  further,  "  Great  geniuses  have 


His  office. 


Orderff 
intett/ct. 


R.  W.  E. 
born  in 
Boston, 
Mass., 
May  25, 
1803. 


i3» 


RALPH   WALDO  EMERSON. 


Ancestry. 


Training. 


Influence 
of  Chan- 
ning. 


Retire- 
ment from 
the  pulpit. 


the  shortest  biographies."  Among  the  external  points 
of  significance  in  Emerson's  story  are  those  derived 
from  his  ancestral  strain,  for  he  was  of  pure  and 
even  gentle  English  blood,  "  through  eight  genera- 
tions of  cultured,  conscientious,  and  practical  minis- 
ters." He  himself,  as  we  know,  assumed  the  profes- 
sion of  his  father  and  forefathers,  and  for  a  time 
was  a  Unitarian  preacher  in  Boston ;  this,  after  the 
stated  courses  at  Harvard,  where  he  read  and  wrote 
philosophy,  nor  failed  to  cultivate  the  Muse  —  for 
whose  art  he  had  shown  a  rare  aptness  even  in  child- 
hood. The  office  and  honors  of  the  Class  Poet  fell 
to  him,  as  to  Lowell  in  after  years.  In  letters  he  had 
Everett,  Ticknor,  and  Edward  Channing  for  instruc- 
tors. In  theology  he  was  deeply  influenced  by  Chan- 
ning, the  divine,  —  the  true  founder,  through  the  work 
of  Emerson  and  lesser  pupils,  of  our  liberal  religious 
structure.  Emerson  projected  the  lines  of  the  master 
so  far  beyond  their  first  draft  that  he  was  unable 
long  to  remain  within  the  Unitarian  limits  of  that 
day.  Some  one  has  cleverly  said  that  his  verse, 
"Good-bye,  proud  world ! "  came  from  one  whose 
future  gave  no  cause  for  epigrams  like  that  of  Ma- 
dame de  SeVigne  on  Cardinal  de  Retz  —  of  whom  she 
wrote  that  he  pretended  to  retire  from  a  world  which 
he  saw  was  retiring  from  him.  The  separation  from 
the  church,  and  the  retreat  to  Concord,  were  the  be- 
ginning of  Emerson's  long  career  as  poet,  lecturer, 
essayist,  thinker  and  inspirer.  The  details  of  his 
social,  domestic,  and  civic  relations  are  all  upon  rec- 
ord. Nothing  could  be  more  seemly  than  his  life- 
long abode  in  the  New  England  village  of  Concord, 
the  home  of  his  line,  the  birth-place  of  our  liberties ; 
and    it    became,   largely   through    his    presence,    the 


THE  ACADEME. 


1 39 


source  of  our  most  resultful  thought.  Here  he 
blended,  in  his  speech  and  action,  the  culture  of  the 
university,  nigh  at  hand,  with  the  shrewd  prudence 
of  the  local  neighborhood,  as  became  a  poet  and 
sage  imbued  with  patriotism,  morals,  and  the  wisdom 
of  practical  life.  Here,  though  crossing  the  ocean 
more  than  once,  and  inspecting  other  lands  with  the 
regard  that  sees  for  once  and  all,  he  otherwise  exem- 
plified during  half  a  century  his  own  conception  of 
the  clear  spirit  —  that  needs  not  to  go  afar  upon  its 
quests,  because,  it  vibrates  boundlessly,  and  includes 
all  things  within  reach  and  ken.  For  the  rest,  the 
life  of  Emerson  appertained  to  the  household,  the 
library,  the  walk,  the  talk  with  all  sorts  and  con- 
ditions of  men,  communion  with  rare  natures,  the 
proper  part  in  local  and  national  movement.  As  a 
lecturer,  his  range  was  the  country  at  large,  but  the 
group  that  drew  about  him  made  Concord  a  modern 
Academe.  Unconsciously  he  idealized  them  all  with 
the  halo  of  his  own  attributes.  To  him  they  all  were 
of  the  breed  so  exquisitely  characterized  in  his  ref- 
erence to  Margaret  Fuller's  "  Friends."  "  I  remem- 
ber," he  says,  "these  persons  as  a  fair,  commanding 
troop,  every  one  of  them  adorned  by  some  splendor 
of  beauty,  of  grace,  of  talent,  or  of  character,  and 
comprising  in  their  band  persons  who  have  since  dis- 
closed sterling  worth  and  elevated  aims  in  the  conduct 
of  life."  Thus  year  after  year  a  tide,  that  ceases  not 
with  the  death  of  him  who  mainly  attracted  it,  has  set 
toward  Concord,  —  a  movement  of  pilgrims  craving 
spiritual  exaltation  and  the  interplay  of  mind  with 
mind.  The  poet's  moral  and  intellectual  experiences 
are  revealed  in  discourses,  always  beginning  with  the 
memorable  sermon  on  the  Lord's  Supper,  which  pre- 


After-life 

and 

career. 


Pupils  and 
associates. 


Concord. 


Sermon  on 
the  Com- 
munion, 
1833. 


140 


RALPH   WALDO  EMERSON. 


Essay  on 

"Nature," 

1836. 


The  tran- 
scendental 
movement. 


His  per- 
sonaltraits 
and  bear- 
ing. 


figured  his  emancipation  from  dogma,1  and  the  es- 
say on  Nature,  wherein  he  applied  a  new  vision  to 
the  world  about  us.  These  were  the  Alpha  of  his 
conviction  and  insight ;  his  after-speech  followed  con- 
sistently and  surely,  "as  the  night  the  day."  He 
created  his  own  audience,  whose  demand  for  his 
thought  grew  by  what  it  fed  on,  beginning  in  a  sec- 
tion, and  spreading  not  only  through  a  country  but 
over  many  lands.  If  it  is  true  that  "  he  was  not  the 
prince  of  transcendentalists  but  the  prince  of  ideal- 
ists," the  history  of  New  England  transcendentalism 
is  no  less  a  corollary  to  the  problem  of  Emerson's 
life. 

Our  starry  memories  of  the  places  and  people  that 
once  knew  Emerson  radiate  always  from  one  centre 
—  the  presence  of  the  sage  himself.  Many  pupils, 
catching  something  of  his  own  sure  and  precise  art 
of  delineation,  have  drawn  his  image  for  us,  dwelling 
upon  the  sinewy  bending  figure,  the  shining  and  ex- 
pectant face,  the  union  of  masculinity  and  sweetness 
in  his  bearing.  His  "full  body  tone"  is  recalled, 
"  full  and  sweet  rather  than  sonorous,  yet  flexible, 
and  haunted  by  many  modulations."  Persuasion  sat 
upon  his  lips.  The  epithet  "  sun-accustomed "  is 
applied  to  Emerson's  piercing  eyes  by  one,  a  woman 
and  a  poet,  who  marked  the  aquiline  effect  of  his 
noble  profile.  I,  too,  remember  him  in  this  wise, 
and  as  the  most  serene  of  men  :  one  whose  repose, 
whose  tranquillity,  was  not  the  contentment  of  an 
idler  housed  in  worldly  comforts,  but  the  token  of 
spiritual  adjustment  to  all  the  correspondences  of 
life;  as  the  bravest  and  most  deferential,  the  proud- 


1  Definitely  set  forth   in  his  Address  before  the  Senior  Class 
in  Divinity  College,  Cambridge,  July  15,  1838. 


HIS  PHILOSOPHY. 


141 


est  in  self-respect,  yet  recognizing  in  deep  humility 
the  supremacy  of  universal  law.  No  man  so  recep- 
tive, and  none  with  so  plain  and  absolute  a  reser- 
vation of  his  own  ground.  Even  in  the  shadow  and 
silence  of  his  closing  years,  he  bore  the  mien  of  one 
assured  that  , 

"  the  gods  reclaim  not  from  the  seer 
Their  gift,  although  he  ceases  here  to  sing, 
And,  like  the  antique  sage,  a  covering 
Draws  round  his  head,  knowing  what  change  is  near." 


III. 

It  is  not  my  province  to  take  part  in  the  discus- 
sion of  Emerson's  philosophy,  his  system  or  lack  of 
system.  Some  notion  of  this,  however,  must  affect 
our  thoughts  of  him  as  a  poet,  since  of  all  moderns 
he  most  nearly  fulfilled  Wordsworth's  inspired  pre- 
diction, uttered  sixty  years  ago,  of  the  approaching 
union  of  the  poet  and  the  philosopher.  He  deemed 
the  higher  office  that  of  the  poet,  — of  him  who  quaffs 
the  brook  that  flows  fast  by  the  oracles,  —  yet  doubt- 
less thought  himself  not  so  well  endowed  with  melody 
and  passion  that  his  teaching  should  be  subordinate 
to  his  song.  But  the  latter  was  always  the  flower- 
ing of  his  philosophic  thought,  and  it  is  essential  to 
keep  in  view  the  basis  of  that  pure  reflection.  He 
looked  upon  Nature  as  pregnant  with  Soul ;  for  him 
the  Spirit  always  moved  upon  the  face  of  the  waters. 
The  incomprehensible  plan  was  perfect :  whatever  is, 
is  right.  Thus  far  he  knew,  and  was  an  optimist  with 
reverent  intent.  It  was  in  vain  to  ask  him  to  assert 
what  he  did  not  know,  to  avow  a  creed  founded  upon 
his  hopes.  If  a  theist,  with  his  intuition  of  an  all- 
pervading   life,  he    no   less   felt   himself   a  portion  of 


142 


RALPH   WALDO  EMERSON. 


Reverence 

without 

dogma. 


An  idealist 
and  eclec- 
tic. 


Morals. 


Life  taken 
at  its  full 
worth. 


that  life,  and  the  sense  of  omnipresence  was  so  clearly 
the  dominant  sense  of  its  attributes,  that  to  call  him 
a  theist  rather  than  a  pantheist  is  simply  a  dispute 
about  terms;  to  pronounce  him  a  Christian  theist  is 
to  go  beyond  his  own  testimony.  Such  a  writer  must 
be  judged  by  the  concurrence  of  his  books ;  they  are 
his  record,  and  the  parole  evidence  of  no  associate 
can  weigh  against  his  written  manifest  for  an  instant. 
His  writings  assure  us  that  he  accepted  all  bibles 
and  creeds  for  what  good  there  was  in  them.  One 
thing  for  him  was  "  certain " :  "  Religions  are  ob- 
solete when  lives  do  not  proceed  from  them."  He 
saw  that  "  unlovely,  nay  frightful,  is  the  solitude  of 
the  soul  which  is  without  God  in  the  world "  \  but 
the  creeds  and  dogmas  of  anthropomorphic  theology 
were  merely  germinal.  "  Man,"  thus  far,  has  "  made 
all  religions,  and  will  yet  make  new  and  even  higher 
faiths." 

Emerson,  a  man  of  our  time,  while  a  transcenden- 
talism looking  inward  rather  than  to  books  for  his 
wisdom,  studied  well  the  past,  and  earlier  sages  were 
the  faculty  of  his  school.  A  latter-day  eclectic,  he 
took  from  all  literatures  their  best  and  essential.  A 
Platonic  idealist,  he  was  not  averse  to  the  inductive 
method  of  Aristotle  ;•  he  had  the  Alexandrian  faith 
and  ecstasy,  the  Epicurean  zest  and  faculty  of  selec- 
tion ;  like  the  Stoics,  he  observed  morals,  heroism, 
self-denial,  and  frugality.  There  is  much  in  his  teach- 
ings that  recalls  the  beautiful  ethics  of  Marcus  Au- 
relius,  and  the  words  of  Epictetus,  as  reported  by 
Arrian.  His  spiritual  leanings  never  stinted  his  re- 
gard of  men  and  manners.  He  kept  a  sure  eye  on 
the  world ;  he  was  not  only  a  philosopher,  but  the 
paragon  of  gentlemen,  with  something  more  than  the 
Oriental,  the  Grecian,  or  the  Gallic,  tact.     He  relished 


A    PLATONIC  IDEALIST. 


H3 


to  the  full  the  brave  distinctions,  the  portraitures  and 
tests  of  Plutarch,  and  found  the  best  of  all  good 
company  in  the  worldly  wise,  the  cheery  and  comfort- 
able Montaigne.  One  may  almost  say  that  he  refined 
and  digested  what  was  good  in  all  philosophies,  and 
nothing  more.  He  would  get  hold  of  Swedenborg, 
the  mystic,  yet  not  be  Swedenborg  exclusively,  nor 
imitate  the  rhetoric  of  the  Sophists,  the  pride  of  the 
Cynics.  From  all  he  learned  what  each  confesses  in 
the  end,  —  the  limitations  of  inquiry,  —  that  the  Finite 
cannot  measure,  though  it  may  feel,  the  Infinite.  No 
more  would  he  formulate  a  philosophy,  but  within  it 
he  could  recognize  nature,  art,  taste,  morals,  laws,  re- 
ligion, and  the  chance  of  immortality.  When  it  was 
said  that  he  had  no  new  system,  he  thought  that  he 
needed  none,  and  was  sceptical  of  classification. 

It  appears  that  he  found  the  key  to  his  own  na- 
ture in  Plato,  being  an  idealist  first  of  all.  His  intu- 
itive faculty  was  so  determined  that  ideality  and  mys- 
ticism gave  him  the  surest  promise  of  realities ;  his 
own  intellect  satisfied  him  of  the  power  of  intellect. 
Plainly  hearing  an  interior  voice,  he  had  no  doubt 
that  other  men  were  similarly  monished.  Plato,  the 
guide  of  his  youth,  remained  his  type  of  philosopher 
and  man.  To  Plato's  works  alone  should  Omar's 
saying  of  the  Koran  be  applied  :  "  Burn  the  libraries, 
for  their  value  is  in  this  book."  Nowhere  else  was 
there  such  a  range  of  speculation.  "  Out  of  Plato 
come  all  things."  And  thus  he  held  to  the  last. 
*'  Of  Plato,"  he  said,  years  afterward,  "  I  hesitate  to 
speak,  lest  there  should  be  no  end.  .  .  .  Why  should 
not  young  men  be  educated  on  this  book  ?  It  would 
suffice  for  the  tuition  of  the  race."  Yet  Emerson's 
philosophy  was  a  greater  advance  from  Neo-Platonism 
than    the  Alexandrians  were    able  to  make  upon  the 


His  wis- 
dom un- 
formulat- 
ed. 


Plato  his 
early 
guide  attd 
type. 


144 


RALPH   WALDO  EMERSON. 


Special 
likeness  of 
Enter  son 
to  Ploti- 
nus. 


Standards 
ofgreat- 


lines  indicated  by  their  elemental  master.  In  per- 
sonal life  and  bearing,  Plotinus,  with  whom  our  poet 
seems  to  have  been  most  in  sympathy,  was  very  closely 
his  prototype.  There  is  first  to  be  noted  the  curious 
resemblance  between  the  eclectic,  investigating  Alex- 
andrian age  and  our  present  time  \  and  secondly,  it 
is  Plotinus  of  whom  we  are  told  that  "  He  lived  at 
the  same  time  with  himself  and  with  others,  and  the 
inward  activity  of  his  spirit  ceased  only  during  his 
hours  of  sleep.  .  .  .  His  written  style  was  close,  preg- 
nant, and  richer  in  thought  than  in  words,  yet  enthu- 
siastic, and  always  pointing  to  the  main  object.  He 
was  more  eloquent  in  his  oral  communications,  and 
was  said  to  be  very  clever  in  finding  the  appropriate 
word,  even  if  he  failed  in  accuracy  on  the  whole. 
Besides  this,  the  beauty  of  his  person  was  increased 
when  discoursing;  his  countenance  was  lighted  up 
with  genius."  Taylor's  translations  of  selections  from 
the  Works  of  Plotinus,  published  in  1817  and  1834, 
must  have  fallen  into  Emerson's  hands,  and  I  am 
satisfied  of  their  impression  upon  his  mind.  As  one 
examines  the  lives  and  writings  of  the  two  men,  the 
likeness  is  still  more  notable,  especially  with  respect 
to  their  views  of  fate,  will,  ethics,  the  "higher  law," 
the  analysis  of  the  beautiful,  and  in  the  ardor  with 
which  young  students,  and  many  of  the  elderly  and 
wise,  listened  to  their  respective  teachings.  Emerson 
was  a  Plotinus  reanimate  after  the  lapse  of  sixteen 
centuries  of  Christianity.  He  has  now,  like  the  Neo- 
Platonist,  "  led  back  the  Divine  principle  within  "  him 
"to  the  God  who  is  all  in  all." 

To  the  great  thinkers  of  the  past,  the  New  England 
teacher,  without  fear  or  boasting,  well  might  feel  him- 
self allied.  The  accepted  great,  free  of  the  ordinary 
bounds   of   place    and    time,    recognize    one    another 


MASTER  AND  SCHOOL. 


145 


across  the  vague,  like  stars  of  the  prime  magnitude  in 
the  open  night.  Emerson  knew  the  haps  and  signs 
of  genius  :  "  Whenever  we  find  a  man  higher  by  a 
whole  head  than  any  of  his  contemporaries,  it  is  sure 
to  come  in  doubt  what  are  his  real  works."  We  can- 
not say  "What  is  master,  and  what  school."  "As 
for  their  borrowings  and  adaptings,  they  know  how  to 
borrow.  ...  A  great  man  is  one  of  the  affinities,  who 
takes  of  everything."  But  they  are  not  above  the  law 
of  perfect  life;  virtue,  simplicity,  absolute  sincerity, 
these  are  their  photosphere.  "  Live  as  on  a  moun- 
tain. Let  men  see,  let  them  know,  a  real  man,  who 
lives  as  he  was  meant  to  live."  To  this  Roman  stand- 
ard the  New  Englander  subjoined  the  shrewd,  kindly 
wisdom  of  his  stock  and  region.  He  was  eminent 
among  those  whose  common  sense  is  the  most  telling 
point  to  be  made  against  Locke's  negation  of  innate 
ideas,  —  whose  judgment  is  so  apt  that,  granting 
Locke's  theory,  it  can  be  accounted  for  only  by  the 
modern  theory  of  ideas  prenatal  and  inherited.  His 
written  wisdom  is  more  effective  than  Montaigne's,  be- 
ing less  dependent  on  citations.  He  knew  by  instinct 
what  our  novelists  learn  from  observation  and  experi- 
ence ;  or  is  it  that  they  study  chiefly  their  own  time 
and  neighborhood,  while  he  sat  aloof  and  with  the 
ages  ?  Thus  strong  in  equipment,  sound  in  heart, 
and  lofty  of  intellect,  we  find  him  revered  by  his  pu- 
pils, and  without  a  living  peer  in  the  faculty  of  ele- 
vating the  purpose  of  those  who  listened  to  his  buoy- 
ant words.  We  must  confess  that  a  differentiation 
between  master  and  school,  and  between  members  of 
the  school,  after  awhile  became  manifest.  That  such 
a  process  was  inevitable  is  plain,  when  Emerson's 
transcendental  and  self-reliant  laws  of  conduct  are 
kept  in  mind. 


Innate 
wisdom. 


146 


RALPH   WALDO  EMERSON. 


Tran- 
scendental 
and  in- 
ductive 
methods 
contrasted. 


The  mas- 
ter and  his 
pupils. 


One  may  say,  in  illustration,  that  his  philosophical 
method  bears  to  the  inductive  or  empirical  a  relation 
similar  to  that  between  the  poetry  of  self-expression 
and  the  poetry  of  aesthetic  creation,  —  a  relation  of 
the  subjective  to  the  objective.  The  former  kind  of 
verse  often  is  the  more  spontaneous,  since  it  has  its 
birth  in  the  human  need  for  utterance.  It  is  the 
cry  of  adolescence  and  femininity,  the  resource  of 
sensitive  natures  in  which  emotion  outvies  the  sense 
of  external  beauty  or  power.  It  was  the  voice  of 
Shakespeare's  youth,  nor  was  it  ever  quieted  through- 
out the  restless  careers  of  Byron,  Heine,  and  De 
Musset.  But  we  accept  as  the  great  works  of  the 
poets  their  intellectual  and  objective  creations,  wherein 
the  artist  has  gone  beyond  his  own  joy  and  pain,  his 
narrow  intro-vision,  to  observe,  combine,  transfigure, 
the  outer  world  of  nature  and  life.  Such  the  epics, 
idyls,  dramas,  of  the  masters.  When  subjective  poe- 
try is  the  yield  of  a  lofty  nature,  or  of  an  ideal  and 
rapturous  womanhood  like  Mrs.  Browning's,  it  is  a 
boon  and  revelation  to  us  all  ;  but  when,  as  too  often, 
it  is  the  spring-rise  of  a  purling,  commonplace  stream- 
let, its  egotism  grows  pitiful  and  repulsive.  This 
lesson  has  been  learned,  and  now  our  minor  poets, 
in  their  fear  of  it,  strive  to  give  pleasure  to  our  sense 
of  the  beautiful,  and  work  as  artists,  —  though  some- 
what too  delicately,  —  rather  than  to  pose  as  excep- 
tional beings,  "among  men,  but  not  of  them." 

As  with  the  subjective  poets,  so  with  many  of  the 
transcendental  acolytes.  The  force  of  Emerson  lay 
in  the  depth  and  clearness  of  his  intentions.  He 
gave  us  the  revelation  and  prophecy  of  a  man  among 
millions.  Such  a  teacher  aids  the  self-development 
of  noble  minds;  his  chief  peril  is  that  of  nurturing 
a  weaker  class   that  cannot  follow  where   he  leads. 


EFFECT  OF  HIS   TEACHINGS. 


H7 


Some  of  its  enthusiasts  will  scarcely  fail  to  set  too 
high  a  value  upon  their  personal  impulses.  They 
"  still  revere,"  but  forget  to  "  still  suspect "  them- 
selves "  in  lowliness  of  heart."  For  the  rest,  the 
down-East  instinct  is  advisory  and  homiletic;  New 
Englanders  are  prone  to  teach,  and  slower  to  be 
taught.  Emerson,  however,  grew  to  be  their  superior 
man,  the  one  to  whom  all  agreed  to  listen,  and  from 
whom  all  quote.  His  example,  also,  has  somewhat 
advanced  the  art  of  listening,  in  which  he  was  so 
perfect,  with  forward  head  and  bright,  expectant  vis- 
age. His  inculcations  were  of  freedom,  of  the  self- 
guidance  that  learns  to  unlearn  and  bears  away  from 
tradition  j  yet  this,  too,  will  breed  false  liberty  of 
conceit  in  minor  votaries,  whose  inward  light  may  do 
well  enough  for  themselves,  yet  not  suffice  for  the 
light  of  the  world.  Hence  the  public,  accepting 
Emerson,  has  been  less  tolerant  of  more  than  one 
Emersonian,  with  his  ego,  et  rex  mens.  After  all  is 
said,  we  must  see  that  our  transcendentalists  were  a 
zealous,  aspiring  band  of  seekers  after  the  true,  the 
beautiful,  and  the  good ;  what  they  have  lacked  in 
deference  they  have  made  up  in  earnestness  and 
spirituality.  There  have  been  receptive  natures 
among  them,  upon  whom,  as  indeed  upon  the  genius 
of  his  people  far  and  wide,  the  tonic  effect  of  Emer- 
son's life  and  precept  has  been  immeasurable.  Goe- 
the's declaration  of  himself  that  he  had  been  "  to  the 
Germans  in  general,  and  to  the  young  German  poets 
in  particular,  their  liberator,"  may,  with  perfect  truth, 
be  applied  to  Emerson,  and  to  a  generation  that  has 
thriven  on  his  word.  He  has  taught  his  countrymen 
the  worth  of  virtue,  wisdom,  courage,  —  above  all,  to 
fashion  life  upon  a  self-reliant  pattern,  obeying  the 
dictates  of  their  own  souls.  , 


Diverse 
results  of 
his  influ- 
ence. 


A  libera, 
tor. 


148 


RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON. 


Emerson, 
the  Poet. 


"  Poems," 

1847. 

"  May- 
Day,  and 
Other 
Pieces," 
1867. 

''■Poems," 
1876. 


Philosophy 
transfig- 
ured. 


His  view 
of  Art. 


Fitness  of 
things. 


IV. 

Recognizing  Emerson's  high  mood  as  that  of  a 
most  original  poet,  I  wish  chiefly  to  consider  his 
relations  to  poetry  and  the  poetic  art.  His  imagi- 
native essays  are  not  poems.  Speech  is  not  song; 
the  rarest  mosaic  lacks  the  soul  of  the  canvas  swept 
by  the  brush.  The  credentials  that  he  presented  from 
time  to  time,  and  mostly  in  that  dawn  when  poets 
sing  if  ever,  are  few  and  fragmentary,  but  they  will 
suffice.  They  are  the  trophies,  the  wreaths  and 
golden  vessels,  the  spolia  opinio,,  which  he  set  before 
the  shrine  of  the  goddess.  They  are  the  avowal  of 
a  rare  spirit  that  there  are  things  which  cannot  be 
rendered  in  prose;  that  Poetry  claims  a  finer  art,  a 
supremer  utterance,  for  her  service,  and  that  she 
alone  can  stamp  the  coins  and  bronzes  which  carry 
to  the  future  the  likeness  of  her  viceroy. 

In  his  verse,  Emerson's  spiritual  philosophy  and 
laws  of  conduct  appear  again,  but  transfigured.  Al- 
ways the  idea  of  Soul,  central  and  pervading,  of 
which  Nature's  forms  are  but  the  created  symbols. 
As  in  his  early  discourse  he  recognized  two  entities, 
Nature  and  the  Soul,  so  to  the  last  he  believed  Art 
to  be  simply  the  union  of  Nature  with  man's  will  — 
Thought  symbolizing  itself  through  Nature's  aid. 
Thought,  sheer  ideality,  was  his  sovereign ;  he  was 
utterly  trustful  of  its  guidance.  The  law  of  poetic 
beauty  depends  on  the  beauty  of  the  thought,  which, 
perforce,  assumes  the  fittest,  and  therefore  most 
charming,  mode  of  expression.  The  key  to  art  is 
the  eternal  fitness  of  things ;  this  is  the  sure  test  and 
solvent.  Over  and  again  he  asserted  his  conviction : 
"  Great  thoughts  insure  musical  expression.  Every 
word   should  be   the    right  word.  .  .  .  The   Imagina- 


THE   UNIVERSAL  SOUL. 


149 


tion  wakened  brings  its  own  language,  and  that  is 
always  musical.  .  .  .  Whatever  language  the  poet  uses, 
the  secret  of  tone  is  at  the  heart  of  the  poem."  He 
cites  Moller,  who  taught  that  the  building  which  was 
fitted  accurately  to  answer  its  end  would  turn  out  to 
be  beautiful,  though  beauty  had  not  been  intended. 
(The  enforced  beauty  of  even  the  rudest  sailing  craft 
always  has  seemed  to  me  the  most  striking  illustra- 
tion of  this  truth.)  In  fine,  Emerson  sees  all  forms 
of  art  symbolizing  but  one  Reason,  not  one  mind, 
but  The  Mind  that  made  the  world.  He  refers  "  all 
production  at  last  to  an  aboriginal  Power."  It  is 
easy  to  discern  that  from  the  first  he  recognized  "  the 
motion  and  the  spirit,"  which  to  Wordsworth  were 
revealed  only  by  the  discipline  of  years  j  but  his  song 
went  beyond  the  range  of  landscape  and  peasant, 
touching  upon  the  verities  of  life  and  thought. 
"  Brahma  "  is  the  presentation  of  the  truth  manifest 
to  the  oldest  and  most  eastern  East,  and  beyond 
which  the  West  can  never  go.  How  strange  that 
these  quatrains  could  have  seemed  strange !  They 
reveal  the  light  of  Asia,  but  no  less  the  thought  of 
Plato  —  who  said  that  in  all  nations  certain  minds 
dwell  on  the  "  fundamental  Unity,"  and  "  lose  all 
being  in  one  Being."  Everywhere  one  stuff,  under 
all  forms,  this  the  woven  symbolism  of  the  universal 
Soul,  the  only  reality,  the  single  and  subdivided  Iden- 
tity that  alone  can  "  keep  and  pass  and  turn  again," 
that  is  at  once  the  doubter  and  the  doubt,  the  slayer 
and  the  slain,  light  and  shadow,  the  hither  and  the 
yon.  Love  is  but  the  affinity  of  its  portions,  the  de- 
sire for  reunion,  the  knowledge  of  soul  by  soul,  to 
which  the  eyes  of  lovers  are  but  windows.  Art  is  the 
handiwork  of  the  soul,  with  materials  created  by  it- 
self, building  better  than  it  knows,  the  bloom  of  at- 
traction and  necessity. 


All  art  a 
reflex  of 
the  univer- 
sal soul. 


"  Brah- 


i5o 


RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON. 


Our  lyric 
poet. 


Margaret 

Fuller's 

comment. 


Why  Di- 
dacticism 
repels  us. 


Thus  far  the  theory  of  Emerson's  song.  It  does 
not  follow  that  he  composed  upon  a  theory.  At 
times  I  think  him  the  first  of  our  lyric  poets,  his 
turns  are  so  wild  and  unexpected  ;  and  he  was  never 
commonplace,  even  when  writing  for  occasions.  His 
verse  changes  unawares  from  a  certain  tension  and 
angularity  that  were  congenital,  to  an  ethereal,  un- 
hampered freedom,  the  poetic  soul  in  full  glow,  the 
inner  music  loosed  and  set  at  large.  Margaret  Fuller 
wrote  that  his  poems  were  "  mostly  philosophical, 
which  is  not  the  truest  kind  of  poetry."  But  this 
depends  upon  the  measure  of  its  didacticism.  Emer- 
son made  philosophical  poetry  imaginative,  elevating, 
and  thus  gave  new  evidence  that  the  poet's  realm  is 
unbounded.  If  he  sought  first  principles,  he  looked 
within  himself  for  them,  and  thus  portrays  himself, 
not  only  the  penetrative  thinker,  but  the  living  man, 
the  citizen,  the  New  England  villager,  whose  symbols 
are  drawn  from  the  actual  woods  and  hills  of  a  neigh- 
borhood. Certainly  he  went  to  rural  nature  for  his 
vigor,  his  imagery  and  adornments.  An  impassioned 
sense  of  its  beauty  made  him  the  reverse  of  the  tra- 
ditional descriptive  poet.  Most  poetry  of  nature  justly 
is  termed  didactic ;  most  philosophical  verse  the  same. 
Miss  Fuller  failed  to  make  distinctions.  All  feel  what 
didacticism  signifies,  but  let  us  try  to  formulate  it. 

Didacticism  is  the  gospel  of  half-truths.  Its  senses 
are  torpid;  it  fails  to  catch  and  convey  the  soul  of 
truth,  which  is  beauty.  Truth  shorn  of  its  beauty  is 
tedious  and  not  poetical.  We  weary  of  didactic  verse, 
therefore,  not  because  of  its  truth,  but  because  of  its 
self-delusive  falsehood.  It  flourishes  with  a  dull  and 
prosaic  generation.  The  true  poet,  as  Mrs.  Browning 
saw,  is  your  only  truth-teller,  because  he  gives  the 
truth  complete  in  beauty  or  not  at  all. 


ON  NA  TURKS  HIDDEN  TRAIL. 


151 


Emerson  doubts  his  power  to  capture  the  very  truth 
of  nature.  Its  essence  —  its  beauty  —  is  so  elusive  \ 
it  flees  and  leaves  but  a  corpse  behind ;  it  is  the 
pearly  glint  of  the  shells  among  the  bubbles  of  the 
latest  wave :  — 

"  I  fetched  my  sea-born  treasures  home ; 
But  the  poor,  unsightly,  noisome  things 
Had  left  their  beauty  on  the  shore, 
With  the  sun,  and  the  sand,  and  the  wild  uproar." 

But  such  poems  as  the  "  Forerunners "  show  how 
closely  he  moved,  after  all,  upon  the  trail  of  the  evad- 
ing sprite.  He  seemed,  by  the  first  intention,  and 
with  an  exact  precision  of  grace  and  aptness,  to  put 
in  phrases  what  he  saw  and  felt,  —  and  he  saw  and 
felt  so  much  more  than  others!  He  had  the  aborig- 
inal eye,  and  the  civilized  sensibility  ;  he  caught  both 
the  external  and  the  scientific  truth  of  natural  things, 
and  their  poetic  charm  withal.  As  he  triumphed  over 
the  untruthfulness  of  the  mere  verse-maker,  and  the 
dulness  of  the  moralist,  his  instant,  sure,  yet  airy 
transcripts  gave  his  poems  of  nature  a  quality  with 
out  a  counterpart.  Some  of  his  measures  had  at  least 
the  flutter  of  the  twig  whence  the  bird  has  just  flown. 
He  did  not  quite  fail  of  that  music  music-born, 

"  a  melody  born  of  melody, 

Which  melts  the  world  into  a  sea. 
Toil  could  never  compass  it ; 
Art  its  height  could  never  hit." 

He  infused  his  meditations  with  the  sheen  of  Day  it- 
self, —  of 

"one  of  the  charmed  days 

When  the  genius  of  God  doth  flow; 

The  wind  may  alter  twenty  ways, 

A  tempest  cannot  blow  ; 

It  may  blow  north,  it  still  is  warm ; 

Or  south,  it  still  is  clear; 


^52 


RALPH   WALDO  EMERSON. 


"The 
Problem! 


"  May- 
Day."" 


A  Iways 
the  one  aj>t 
word. 


A  rtless- 
ness. 


Or  east,  it  smells  like  a  clover-farm ; 
Or  west,  no  thunder  fear." 

He  returns  with   delight  to  Nature's  blending  of  her 
laws  of  beauty  and  use,  perceiving  that  she 

"beats  in  perfect  tune, 

And  rounds  with  rhyme  her  every  rune, 

Whether  she  work  in  land  or  sea, 

Or  hide  underground  her  alchemy. 

Thou  canst  not  wave  thy  staff  in  air, 

Or  dip  thy  paddle  in  the  lake, 

But  it  carves  the  bow  of  beauty  there, 

And  the  ripples  in  rhymes  the  oar  forsake." 

"Woodnotes"  is  full  of  lyrical  ecstasy  and  light- 
some turns  and  graces.  To  assimilate  such  a  poem 
of  nature,  or  "The  Problem,"  that  masterpiece  of 
religion  and  art,  is  to  feed  on  holy  dew,  and  to  com- 
prehend how  the  neophytes  who  were  bred  upon  it 
find  the  manna  of  noontide  somewhat  rank  and  innu- 
tritious.  "  May-Day  "  is  less  lyrical,  more  plainly  de- 
scriptive of  the  growth  and  meaning  of  the  Spring,  but 
not  in  any  part  didactic.  It  is  the  record  of  the  poet's 
training,  a  match  to  Wordsworth's  portrayal  of  his 
subjective  communing  with  Nature  in  youth  ;  its  spirit 
is  the  same  with  Lowell's  woodland  joyousness,  one 
of  child-like  and  unquestioning  zest.  Finally,  this 
poet's  scenic  joinery  is  so  true,  so  mortised  with  the 
one  apt  word,  as  where  he  says  that  the  wings  of 
Time  are  "pied  with  morning  and  with  night,"  and  the 
one  best  word  or  phrase  is  so  unlooked  for,  that,  as  I 
say,  we  scarcely  know  whether  all  this  comes  by  grace 
of  instinct,  or  with  search  and  artistic  forethought.  It 
seems  "  the  first  fine  careless  rapture " ;  the  labor, 
which  results  in  the  truth  of  Tennyson's  landscape 
and  the  pathos  of  Longfellow's,  may  be  there,  but  is 
not  to  be  detected,  and  in  these  touches,  if  not  other- 
wise, he  excelled  his   compeers.      His  generalizations 


PROPHETIC  INTUITION. 


153 


pertain  to  the  unseen  world;  viewing  the  actual,  he 
puts  its  strength  and  fineness  alike  into  a  line  or  epi- 
thet. He  was  born  with  an  unrivalled  faculty  of  se- 
lection. Monadnock  is  the  "  constant  giver,"  the  Titan 
that  "  heeds  his  sky-affairs  "  j  the  tiny  humming-bee  a 
"  voyager  of  light  and  noon,"  a  "  yellow-breeched  phi- 
losopher," and  again  an  "  animated  torrid  zone  " ;  the 
defiant  titmouse,  an  "atom  in  full  breath."  For  a 
snow-storm,  or  the  ocean,  he  uses  his  broader  brush, 
but  once  only  and  well.  His  minute  truth  and  sense 
of  values  are  held  in  honor  by  his  pupils  Whitman 
and  Burroughs,  our  poetic  familiars  of  the  field,  and 
by  all  to  whom  the  seasonable  marvels  of  the  pas- 
toral year  are  not  unwelcome  or  unknown. 

Thus  keenly  Emerson's  instinct  responded  to  the 
beauty  of  Nature.  I  have  hinted  that  her  secure 
laws  were  the  chief  promoters  of  his  imagination.  It 
coursed  along  her  hidden  ways.  In  this  he  antedated 
Tennyson,  and  was  less  didactic  than  Goethe  and 
kindred  predecessors.  His  foresight  gave  spurs  to 
the  intellect  of  Tyndall  and  other  investigators,  —  to 
their  ideal  faculty,  without  which  no  explorer  moves 
from  post  to  outpost  of  discovery.  Correlatively,  each 
wonder-breeding  point  attained  by  the  experimental- 
ists was  also  occupied  by  our  eager  and  learned  thinker 
from  the  moment  of  its  certainty.  Each  certainty  gave 
him  joy ;  reasoning  a  priori  from  his  sense  of  a  spirit- 
ual Force,  the  seer  anticipated  the  truths  demonstrated 
by  the  inductive  workers,  and  expected  the  demon- 
stration. Even  in  "  The  Sphinx,"  the  first  poem  of 
his  first  collection,  the  conservation  of  force,  the  evo- 
lution from  the  primordial  atom,  are  made  to  subserve 
his  mystical  faith  in  a  broad  Identity.  Here,  thirty 
years  before  Tennyson  made  his  most  compact  ex- 
pression of  the  central  truth, — 


His  epi- 
thets. 


Scientific 
prescience. 


Darwin 
antici- 
pated. 


"The 
Sphinx.' 


154 


RALPH   WALDO  EMERSON. 


Th£  seer 
of  evolu- 
tion. 


"  Flower  in  the  crannied  wall  .  .  . 
Little  flower  —  but  if  I  could  understand 
What  you  are,  root  and  all,  and  all  in  all, 
I  should  know  what  God  and  man  is," 
Emerson  had  put  it  in  this  wise  :  — 

"  Thorough  a  thousand  voices 
Spoke  the  universal  dame  : 
'Who  telleth  one  of  my  meanings, 
Is  master  of  all  I  am.' " 

The  reference,  in  "  Bacchus,"  to  the  ascent  of  life 
from  form  to  form,  still  remains  incomparable  for  terse- 
ness and  poetic  illumination  :  — 

"  I,  drinking  this, 

Shall  hear  far  Chaos  talk  with  me ; 
Kings  unborn  shall  walk  with  me ; 
And  the  poor  grass  shall  plot  and  plan 
What  it  will  do  when  it  is  man." 

And  in  "Woodnotes"  he  discoursed  of 

"the  genesis  of  things, 

Of  tendency  through  endless  ages, 
Of  star-dust  and  star-pilgrimages, 
Of  rounded  worlds,  of  space  and  time, 
Of  the  old  flood's  subsiding  slime  "  ; 
but  always  thinks   of  the   universal   Soul  as  the  only 
reality,  —  of   creation's   process   as   simply   the   meta- 
morphosis which 

"  Melts  things  that  be  to  things  that  seem, 
And  solid  nature  to 'a  dream." 

Even  in  the  pathetic  "Threnody"  he  stays  his  an- 
guish with  faith  in  the  beneficence  of  Law.  With 
more  passion  and  less  method  than  afterward  gave 
form  to  "In  Memoriam,"  he  declared  that  the  "mys- 
teries of  Nature's  heart "  were  "  past  the  blasphemies 
of  grief."     He  saw 

"the  genius  of  the  whole, 

Ascendant  in  the  primal  soul, 
Beckon  it  when  to  go  and  come." 


HIS   THEORY  OF  SECLUSION. 


155 


Such  a  poet  was  not  like  to  go  backward.  The 
"  Song  of  Nature "  is  his  paean  to  her  verities,  still 
more  clearly  manifest  in  his  riper  years.  This  superb 
series  of  quatrains,  cumulative  as  thunder-heads  and 
fired  with  lyric  glory,  will  lend  its  light  to  whatsoever 
the  poetry  of  the  future  has  in  reserve  for  us. 

It  should  be  noted  that  Emerson's  vision  of  the  sub- 
lime in  scientific  discovery  increased  his  distaste  for 
mere  style,  and  moved  him  to  contentment  with  the 
readiest  mode  of  expression.  It  tempered  his  eulogy 
of  "  Art,"  and  made  him  draw  this  contrast :  "  Nature 
transcends  all  moods  of  thought,  and  its  secret  we  do 
not  yet  find.  But  a  gallery  stands  at  the  mercy  of  our 
moods,  and  there  is  a  moment  when  it  becomes  frivo- 
lous. I  do  not  wonder  that  Newton,  with  an  attention 
habitually  engaged  on  the  paths  of  planets  and  suns, 
should  have  wondered  what  the  Earl  of  Pembroke 
found  to  admire  in  'stone  dolls.'" 

Right  here  we  observe  (deferring  matters  of  con- 
struction) that  our  seer's  limitations  as  a  poet  are  in- 
dicated by  his  dependence  on  out-door  nature,  and  by 
his  failure  to  utilize  those  higher  symbols  of  the  prime 
Intelligence  which  comprise  the  living,  acting,  suffer- 
ing world  of  man.  With  a  certain  pride  of  reserve, 
that  did  not  lessen  his  beautiful  deference  to  individ- 
uals, he  proclaimed  "  the  advantage  which  the  country 
life  possesses  for  a  powerful  mind  over  the  artificial 
and  curtailed  life  of  cities."  He  justified  solitude  by 
saying  that  great  men,  from  Plato  to  Wordsworth,  did 
not  live  in  a  crowd,  but  descended  into  it  from  time  to 
time  as  benefactors.  Above  all  he  declared  -"lam 
by  nature  a  poet,  and  therefore  must  live  in  the  coun- 
try." But  here  a  Goethe,  or  De  Musset,  or  Browning 
might  rejoin  :  "  And  I  am  a  poet,  and  need  the  focal 
life  of  the  town."     If  man  be  the  paragon  of  life  on 


"  Song  0/ 
Nature." 


Science 
and  A  rt. 
Cp.  "  Vic- 
torian 
Poets": 
pp.  1 2-16. 


Emersorfs 
limita- 
tions. 


Narrow- 
ing the 
poefsfran- 
chise. 


156 


RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON. 


this  globe,  his  works  and  passions  the  rarest  symbols 
of  the  life  unseen,  then  the  profoundest  study  is  man- 
kind. Emerson's  theorem  was  a  restriction  of  the 
poet's  liberties.  One  can  name  great  poets  who  would 
have  been  greater  but  for  the  trammels  of  their  seclu- 
sion. I  believe  that  Emerson's  came  from  self-knowl- 
edge. He  kept  his  range  with  incomparable  tact  and 
philosophy.  Poets  of  a  wider  franchise  —  with  Shake- 
speare at  their  front  —  have  found  that  genius  gains 
most  from  Nature  during  that  formative  period  when 
one  reads  her  heart,  if  ever,  and  that  afterward  he  may 
safely  leave  her,  as  a  child  his  mother,  to  return  from 
time  to  time,  but  still  to  do  his  part  among  the  ranks 
of  men. 

Emerson  makes  light  of  travel  for  pleasure  and  ob- 
servation, but  ever  more  closely  would  observe  the 
ways  of  the  inanimate  world.  Yet  what  are  man's 
works  but  the  works  of  Nature  by  one  remove?  To 
one  poet  is  given  the  ear  to  comprehend  the  murmur 
of  the  forest,  to  another  the  sense  that  times  the  heart- 
beats of  humanity.  Few  have  had  Emerson's  inward 
eye,  but  it  is  well  that  some  have  not  been  restricted 
to  it.  He  clung  by  attraction,  no  less  than  by  circum- 
stance, to  "a  society  in  which  introspection,"  as  Mr. 
James  has  shrewdly  written,  "  thanks  to  the  want  of 
other  entertainment,  played  almost  the  part  of  a  so- 
cial resource."  His  verse,  in  fact,  is  almost  wholly 
void  of  the  epic  and  dramatic  elements  which  inform 
the  world's  great  works  of  art.  Action,  characteriza- 
tion, specific  sympathy,  and  passion  are  wanting  in  his 
song.  His  voice  comes  "  like  a  falling  star  "  from  a 
skyey  dome  of  pure  abstraction.  Once  or  twice,  some 
little  picture  from  life,  —  a  gypsy  girl,  a  scarcely  out- 
lined friend  or  loved  one,  —  but  otherwise  no  person- 
age in  his  works  except,  it  may  be,  the  poet  himself, 


RADIANT  BUT  HIGH-REMOVED. 


l57 


the  Saadi  of  his  introspective  song:  even  that  wise 
and  joyous  bard  restored  in  fragments,  suggested  rather 
than  portrayed.  Emerson  would  be  the  "best  bard, 
because  the  wisest,"  if  the  wisdom  of  his  song  illus- 
trated itself  in  living  types.  He  knew  the  human 
world,  none  better,  and  generalized  the  sum  of  its  at- 
tainments, —  was  gracious,  shrewd,  and  calm,  —  but 
could  not  hold  up  the  mirror  and  show  us  to  ourselves. 
He  was  that  unique  songster,  a  poet  of  fire  and  vision, 
quite  above  the  moralist,  yet  neither  to  be  classed  as 
objective  or  subjective  ;  he  perceived  the  source  of  all 
passion  and  wisdom,  yet  rendered  neither  the  hearts  of 
others  nor  his  own.  His  love  poetry  is  eulogized,  but 
it  wants  the  vital  grip  wherewith  his  "Concord  Fight" 
and  "  Boston  Hymn  "  fasten  on  our  sense  of  manhood 
and  patriotism.  It  chants  of  Love,  not  of  the  beloved ; 
its  flame  is  pure  and  general  as  moonlight  and  as 
high-removed.  "  All  mankind  love  a  lover,"  and  it  is 
not  enough  to  discourse  upon  the  philosophy  of  "  Love," 
"  Experience,"  "  Power,"  "  Friendship."  Emerson's 
"  Bacchus  "  must  press  for  him 

"wine,  but  wine  which  never  grew 

In  the  belly  of  the  grape." 

His  deepest  yearnings  are  expressed  in  that  passion- 
ate outburst,  —  the  momentary  human  wail  over  his 
dead  child,  —  and  in  the  human  sense  of  lost  com- 
panionship when  he  tells  us,  — 

"  In  the  long  sunny  afternoon, 
The  plain  was  full  of  ghosts." 

Often er  he  moves  apart ;  his  blood  is  ichor,  not  our 
own ;  his  thoughts  are  with  the  firmament.  We  rev- 
erence his  vocation,  and  know  ourselves  unfitted  for 
it.  He  touches  life  more  nearly  in  passages  that  have 
the  acuteness,  the  practical  wisdom  of  his  prose  works 
and  days  ;  but  these  are  not  his  testimonials  as  a  poet. 


Charac- 
teristics. 


158 


RALPH   WALDO  EMERSON. 


A  layer  on 
of  hands. 


Rossetti. 


Metrical 
style. 


His  laying  on  of  hands  was  more  potent  j  a  trans- 
mitted heat  has  gone  abroad  through  the  ministry  of 
his  disciples,  who  practise  as  he  preached,  and  some- 
times transcend  both  his  preaching  and  his  practice. 
All  the  same,  the  originator  of  a  force  is  greater  than 
others  who  add  four-fold  to  its  momentum.  They  are 
never  so  manifestly  his  pupils  as  when  they  are  "  scar- 
ifying "  and  "  sounding  and  exploring  "  him,  "  re- 
porting where  they  touch  bottom  and  where  not,"  on 
ground  of  their  own,  but  with  a  pleasant  mockery  of 
the  master's  word  and  wont.  There  was  a  semblance 
between  the  poets  Emerson  and  Rossetti,  first,  in  the 
small  amount  of  their  lyrical  work,  and  again  in  the 
positive  influence  which  each  exerted  upon  his  pupils. 
In  quality  the  Concord  seer,  and  the  English  poet  who 
was  at  once  the  most  spiritual  and  sensuous  of  his 
own  school,  were  wholly  unlike.  Rossetti  was  touched 
with  white  fire,  but  dreamed  of  souls  that  meet  and 
glow  when  disembodied.  The  spirits  of  his  beatified 
thrill  with  human  passion.  Our  seer  brought  some- 
thing of  heaven  to  earth,  while  Rossetti  yearned  to 
carry  life  through  death  to  heaven. 

The  technical  features  of  Emerson's  verse  corre- 
spond to  our  idea  of  its  meaning.  In  fact,  his  view  of 
personal  culture  also  applied  to  his  metrical  style. 
"  Manners  are  not  to  be  directly  cultivated.  That  is 
frivolous  ;  leave  it  to  children.  .  .  .  We  must  look  at 
the  mark,  not  at  the  arrow,  and  perhaps  the  best  rule 
is  Lord  Bacon's,  —  that  to  attain  good  forms  one  only 
needs  not  to  despise  them."  Delicate  and  adroit 
artisans,  in  whose  eyes  poetry  is  solely  a  piece  of 
design,  may  find  the  awkwardness  of  Emerson's  verse 
a  bar  to  right  comprehension  of  its  frequent  beauty 
and  universal  purpose.  I  am  not  sure  but  one  must 
be  of  the  poet's   own   country  and   breeding  to  look 


SLIGHT  CONSTRUCTIVE  FACULTY. 


59 


£> 


quite  down  his  vistas  and  by-paths  :  for  every  Amer- 
ican has  something  of  Emerson  in  him,  and  the  secret 
of  the  land  was  in  the  poet,  —  the  same  Americanism 
that  Whitman  sees  in  the  farmer,  the  deck-hand,  the 
snag-toothed  hostler,  atoning  with  its  humanities  for 
their  sins  past  and  present,  as  for  the  sins  of  Harte's 
gamblers  and  diggers  of  the  gulch.  It  may  be,  too, 
that  other  conditions  are  needed  to  open  the  ear  to 
the  melody,  and  to  shut  out  the  discords,  of  Emerson's 
song.  The  melody  is  there,  and  though  the  range  be 
narrow,  is  various  within  itself.  The  charm  is  that  of 
new-world  and  native  wood-notes  wild.  Not  seldom  a 
lyrical  phrase  is  the  more  taking  for  its  halt,  —  helped 
out,  like  the  poet's  own  speech,  by  the  half-stammer 
and  pause  that  were  wont  to  precede  the  rarest  or 
weightiest  word  of  all. 

Among  the  followers  of  any  art  there  are  those 
whose  compositions  are  effective  in  the  mass,  their 
treatment  broad,  the  beauty  pervasive;  again,  those 
who  with  small  constructive  feeling  are  rich  in  detail, 
and  whose  work  is  interspersed  with  fine  and  origi- 
nal touches;  lastly,  the  complete  artists,  in  whom, 
however  vivid  their  originality  and  great  their  special 
beauties,  the  general  design  is  always  kept  in  hand. 
Emerson  never  felt  the  strength  of  proportion  that 
compels  the  races  to  whom  art  is  a  religion  and  a  law. 
He  has  given  many  a  pang  to  lovers  of  the  beautiful, 
who  have  endured  his  irreverence  by  allowing  for  his 
supposed  disabilities.  He  satisfied  his  conscience  in 
the  same  easy  way,  declaring  that  he  was  from  his 
"  very  incapacity  of  mechanical  writing  "  a  "  chartered 
libertine."  But  his  speech  bewrayeth  him.  Who  sounds 
one  perfect  chord  can  sound  again.  His  greater  ef- 
forts in  verse,  as  in  prose,  show  that  he  chose  to 
deprecate  the  constructive  faculty  lest  it  might  limit 


Native 

wood-notes 

wild. 


Deficient 
sense  of 
proportion. 


i6o 


RALPH   WALDO  EMERSON. 


A  noncon- 
formist. 


Miss  Ful- 
ler on  his 
synthesis. 


Unique 
lyrics  and 
notable 
sayings. 


his  ease  and  freedom.  And  his  instinct  of  person- 
ality, not  without  a  pride  of  its  own,  made  him  a  non- 
conformist. We  are  told  of  his  mode  of  preparing  an 
essay,  —  of  the  slow-growing  medley  of  thoughts  on  a 
topic,  at  last  brought  out  and  strung  at  random,  like 
a  child's  variegated  beads.  But  I  do  not  find  that  his 
best  essays  read  backward  as  well  as  forward  ;  I  sus- 
pect an  art  beneath  their  loose  arrangement,  and  I 
see  at  times  the  proof  of  continuous  heat.  His  early 
critic  declared  that  he  had  not  "  written  one  good 
work,  if  such  a  work  be  one  where  the  whole  com- 
mands more  attention  than  the  parts."  But  again  we 
see  that  she  too  rarely  qualified  her  oracles.  At  that 
time  he  had  written  poems  of  which  the  whole  and  the 
parts  were  at  least  justly  related  masterpieces,  —  lyrical 
masterpieces,  of  course,  not  epic  or  dramatic  ;  of  such 
were  the  "  Threnody "  and  "  Woodnotes,"  to  which 
was  afterward  added  the  "  May-Day."  Breadth  and 
proportion,  in  a  less  degree,  mark  "The  Problem," 
"  Monadnock,"  "  Merlin,"  and  a  few  other  pieces. 
But  working  similarly  he  falls  short  in  the  labored 
dithyrambic,  "  Initial,  Daemonic,  and  Celestial  Love." 
He  was  formal  enough  in  youth,  before  he  struck  out 
for  himself,  and  at  the  age  of  eleven,  judging  from  his 
practice-work,  was  as  precocious  as  Bryant  or  Poe. 
But  he  soon  gave  up  construction,  putting  a  trade- 
mark upon  his  verse,  and  trusting  that  freedom  would 
lead  to  something  new.  So  many  precious  sayings  en- 
rich his  more  sustained  poems  as  to  make  us  include 
him  at  times  with  the  complete  artists.  Certainly,  both 
in  these  and  in  the  unique  bits  so  characteristic  that 
they  are  the  poet  himself,  —  "Terminus,"  "Character," 
"  Manners,"  "  Nature,"  etc.,  —  he  ranks  with  the  fore- 
most of  the  second  class,  poets  eminent  for  special 
graces,  values,   sudden    meteors  of  thought.     In  that 


'SAYINGS  CRAVED  IN  GOLD. 


161 


gift  for  "  saying  things,"  so  notable  in  Pope  and  Ten- 
nyson, he  is  the  chief  of  American  poets.  From  what 
other  bard  have  so  many  original  lines  and  phrases 
passed  into  literature,  —  inscriptions  that  do  not  wear 
out,  graven  in  bright  and  standard  gold  ?  It  is  worth 
while,  for  the  mere  effect,  to  group  some  of  them 
together,  and  especially  those  which,  appearing  in  his 
first  book  forty  years  ago,  long  since  became  a  con- 
stituent part  of  our  literary  thought  and  expression  :  — 

"  'T  is  the  law  of  bush  and  stone, 
Each  can  only  take  his  own." 

"  The  thoughts  that  he  shall  think 
Shall  not  be  forms  of  stars,  but  stars, 
Nor  pictures  pale,  but  Jove  and  Mars." 

"  Hast  thou  named  all  the  birds  without  a  gun  ? 
Loved  the  wood- rose  and  left  it  on  its  stalk?" 

"  Heartily  know, 
When  half-gods  go 
The  gods  arrive." 

"  What  is  excellent, 
As  God  lives,  is  permanent  ; 
Hearts  are  dust,  hearts'  loves  remain." 

"  Born  for  the  future,  to  the  future  lost." 

"  Not  for  all  his  faith  can  see 
Would  I  that  cowled  churchman  be." 

"  Not  from  a  vain  or  shallow  thought 
His  awful  Jove  young   Phidias  brought ; 

Out  from  the  heart  of  nature  rolled 
The  burdens  of  the  Bible  old." 

"The  hand  that  rounded  Peter's  dome 
II 


"Jewels 
.  .  ■  on  the 
stretched 
forefinger 
of  all 
Time." 


l62 


RALPH   WALDO  EMERSON. 


Wrought  in  a  sad  sincerity; 
Himself  from  God  he  could  not  free  ; 
He  builded  better  than  he  knew  ;  — 
The  conscious  stone  to  beauty  grew." 

"  Earth  proudly  wears  the  Parthenon 
As  the  best  gem  upon  her  zone  ; 
And  Morning  opes  with  haste  her  lids, 
To  gaze  upon  the  Pyramids." 

w  One  accent  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
The  heedless  world  hath  never  lost." 


"  Or  ever  the  wild  Time  coined  itself 
Into  calendar  months  and  days." 

"  Set  not  thy  foot  on  graves." 

"  Good-bye,   proud  world  !  I  'm  going  home." 

What  are  they  all,  in  their  high  conceit, 
When  man  in  the  bush  with  God  may  meet  ?  " 

"  —  If  eyes  were  made  for  seeing, 
Then  Beauty  is  its  own  excuse  for  being." 

"  Leave  all  thy  pedant  lore  apart, 
God  hid  the  whole  world  in  thy  heart." 

"  And  conscious  Law  is  King  of  kings." 

"  —  Mount  to  paradise 
By  the  stairway  of  surprise." 

"  Here  once  the  embattled  farmers  stood, 
And  fired  the  shot  heard  round  the  world." 

"  Great  is  the  art, 
Great  be  the  manners,  of  the  bard." 

"  The  silent  organ  loudest  chants 
The  master's  requiem." 


RHYTHMICAL   COMPRESSION. 


163 


Verses  from  Emerson's  later  poems,  —  which  came 
at  rare  intervals,  after  the  public  had  learned  to  seek 
for  the  sweet  kernel  in  every  nut  that  fell  from  his 
tree,  —  are  scarcely  less  familiarized  and  put  to  use  :  — 

"Deep  in  the  man  sits  fast  his  fate 
To  mould  his  fortunes  mean  or  great: 
Unknown  to  Cromwell  as  to  me 
Was  Cromwell's  measure  or  degree." 

"O  tenderly  the  haughty  day 
Fills  his  blue  urn  with  fire  ! " 

"I  hung  my  verses  in  the  wind, 
Time  and  tide  their  faults  may  find ; 
All  were  winnowed  through  and  through, 
Five  lines  lasted  sound  and  true." 

"  Winters  know 
Easily  to  shed  the  snow, 
And  the  untaught  Spring  is  wise 
In  cowslips  and  anemones." 

"It  is  time  to  be  old, 
To  take  in  sail, — 


Newfelic- 

ities. 


Obey  the  voice  at  eve  obeyed  at  prime: 
'Lowly  faithful,  banish  fear, 
Right  onward  drive  unharmed; 
The  port,  well  worth  the  crufse,  is  near, 
And  every  wave  is  charmed.'" 

"He  spoke,  and  words  more  soft  than  rain 
Brought  the  Age  of  Gold  again ; 
His  action  won  such  reverence  sweet 
As  hid  all  measure  of  the  feat." 

The  poet's  rhythm  and  gift  of  compression  made 
verse  like  the  foregoing  a  kind  of  ambrosial  pemmi- 
can,  easily  carried  for  spiritual  sustenance.  Phrases 
in  his  prose,  which  have  become  more  current,  move 


Rhyth- 
mical com* 
pression. 


1 64 


RALPH   WALDO  EMERSON. 


Unsur- 
passed in 
lyrical 
"quality" 


in  foot-beats,  such  as,  —  "  Hitch  your  wagon  to  a 
star,"  "Nature  is  loved  by  what  is  best  in  us,"  and 
"The  hues  of  sunset  make  life  great."  He  thought 
rhythm  indispensable,  and  rhyme  most  efficacious,  as 
the  curators  of  poetic  thought.  "  Every  good  poem  I 
know  I  recall  by  its  rhythm  also." 

Popular  instinct,  recognized  by  those  who  compile 
our  anthologies,  forbids  an  author  to  be  great  in  more 
than  one  way.  These  editors  go  to  Emerson  for 
point  and  wisdom,  and  too  seldom  for  his  truth  to 
nature  and  his  strictly  poetic  charm.  Yet  who  excels 
him  in  quality  ?  That  Margaret  Fuller  had  a  fine 
ear,  and  an  independent  one,  is  proved  by  her  admis- 
sion that  "in  melody,  in  subtilty  of  thought  and  ex- 
pression," he  took  the  highest  rank.  He  often  cap- 
tures us  with  absolute  beauty,  the  poetry  that  poets 
love, — the  lilt  and  melody  of  Shelley  (whose  vague- 
ness irked  him)  joined  to  precision  of  thought  and 
outline.  Poe  might  have  envied  "  Uriel  "  his  lutings 
of"  the  spangled  heaven  ;  he  could  not  have  read 
"Woodnotes,"  or  he  would  have  found  something  kin- 
dred in  the  bard  who  said,  — 

"Quit  thy  friends  as  the  dead  in  doom, 
And  build  to  them  a  final  tomb ; 
Let  the  starred  shade  that  nightly  falls 
Still  celebrate  their  funerals, 
And  the  bell  of  beetle  and  of  bee 
Knell  their  melodious  memory." 

Emerson  "listened  to  the  undersong,"  but  rejoiced 
no  less  in  the  "  divine  ideas  below  "  of  the  Olympian 

bards, 

"Which  always  find  us  young 
And  always  keep  us  -so." 

His  modes  of  expression,  like  his  epithets,  are  imag- 
inative.    The   snow  is   "the   north-wind's   masonry"; 


THRENODY.'  —  <  MERLIN.' 


I65 


feeling  and  thought  are  scarcely  deeper  than  his 
speech  j  he  puts  in  words  the  "  tumultuous  privacy  of 
storm,"  or  the  "  sweet  varieties  of  chance."  With 
what  high  ecstasy  of  pain  he  calls  upon  the  deep- 
eyed  boy,  the  hyacinthine  boy,  of  his  marvellous 
"  Threnody !  "  Time  confirms  the  first  impression 
that  this  is  the  most  spontaneous,  the  most  elevating, 
of  lyrical  elegies,  —  that  it  transcends  even  the  divine 
verse  of  Bishop  King's  invocation  to  his  entombed 
wife.  How  abrupt,  how  exquisitely  ideal,  the  open- 
ing phrase  !  Afterward,  and  throughout,  the  pure 
spirit  of  poetry  rarefied  by  the  passion  of  its  theme  : 
the  departed  child  is  the  superangelic  symbol  of  the 
beauty,  the  excellence,  that  shall  be  when  time  ripens 
and  the  harmonies  of  nature  are  revealed, — when  life 
is  no  longer  a  dream  within  a  dream.  Read  the 
"  Threnody  "  anew.  What  grace  !  What  ^Eolian 
music,  what  yearning  !  What  prophecy  and  exalta- 
tion 1  See  how  emotion  becomes  the  soul  of  art.  Or 
is  it  that  true  passion  cannot  but  express  itself  in 
verse  at  once  simple  and  sensuous,  thus  meeting  all 
<he  cardinal  points  of  Milton's  law? 

One  readily  perceives  that  "  Merlin "  conveys  Em- 
erson's spirited  conception  of  the  art  and  manners  of 
the  bard.     His  should  be  no  trivial  harp  :  — 

■  No  jingling  serenader's  art, 
Nor  tinkle  of  piano  strings ; 


The  kingly  bard 

Must  smite  the  cords  rudely  and  hard, 

As  with  hammer  or  with  mace ; 

He  shall  not  his  brain  encumber 
With  the  coil  of  rhythm  and  number ; 
But  leaving  rule  and  pale  forethought, 
He  shall  aye  climb 
For  his  rhyme." 


The 

"  Thren- 
ody:'' 


"Merlin." 


1 66 


RALPH   WALDO  EMERSON. 


Emerson 
and  Whit- 
man. 


Favorite 
poets  and 
measures. 


Thus  fearlessly  should  a  poet  compel  the  Muse ; 
and  even  to  a  broader  liberty  of  song  one,  at  least, 
of  Emerson's  listeners  pushed  with  deliberate  zeal. 
Walt  Whitman  was  stimulated  by  this  teaching,  and 
by  the  rugged  example  of  Carlyle,  to  follow  resolutely 
the  method  which  suited  his  bent  and  project;  and 
Emerson's  "  Mithridates,"  we  may  say,  is  at  once  the 
key-note  and  best  defence  of  Whitman's  untrammelled, 
all-heralding  philosophy.  The  descriptive  truth,  the 
lusty  Americanism,  of  the  democratic  chanter  took 
hold  upon  the  master's  expectant  heart.  A  later  mod- 
ification of  the  first  welcome,  and  the  omission  of  the 
new  songs  from  "Parnassus,"  had  no  bearing  upon 
the  question  of  their  morals  or  method  ;  Emerson 
was  moved  solely  by  his  taste,  —  and  New  England 
taste  has  a  supreme  dislike  of  the  unsavory.  The 
world,  even  the  Concord  world,  is  not  wholly  given 
over  to  prudery.  It  has  little  dread,  nowadays,  of 
the  voluptuous  in  art,  ancient  or  modern.  But  to 
those  of  Puritan  stock  cleanliness  is  even  more  than 
godliness.  There  is  no  "  fair  perdition  "  tempting  us 
in  the  "  Song  of  Myself  "  and  the  "  Children  of  Adam." 
But  here  are  things  which,  whether  vessels  of  honor 
or  dishonor,  one  does  not  care  to  have  before  him 
too  often  or  too  publicly,  and  which  were  unattractive 
to  the  pure  and  temperate  seer,  whose  race  had  so 
long  inhabited  the  clean-swept  keeping-rooms  of  the 
land  of  mountain  breezes  and  transparent  streams. 
The  matter  was  one  of  artistic  taste  and  of  the  incli- 
nations of  Emerson's  nature,  rather  than  of  prudery 
or  censorship. 

As  for  his  own  style,  Emerson  was  impressed  in 
youth  by  the  free-hand  manner  of  the  early  drama- 
tists, whom  he  read  with  avidity.  He  soon  formed  his 
characteristic  measure,  varying  with  "  sixes,"  "  sevens," 


THE  LA  TER  POEMS. 


167 


and  "eights,"  resembling  Ben  Jonson's  lyrical  style, 
but  even  more  like  that  of  Milton,  Marvell,  and  other 
worthies  of  the  Protectorate.  In  spirit  and  imagery, 
in  blithe  dithyrambic  wisdom,  he  gained  much  from 
his  favorite  Orientals  —  Saadi  and  Hafiz.  One  stately 
and  various  measure  he  rarely  essayed,  but  showed 
that  it  was  well  suited  to  his  genius.  In  "Musketa- 
quid  "  and  "  Sea-Shore  "  we  see  the  aptness  of  his  ear 
and  hand  for  blank  verse.  The  little  poem  of  "  Days," 
imitated  from  the  antique,  is  unmatched,  outside  of 
Landor,  for  compression  and  self-poise  :  — 

"Daughters  of  Time,  the  hypocritic  Days, 
Muffled  and  dumb  like  barefoot  dervishes, 
And  marching  single  in  an  endless  file, 
Bring  diadems  and  fagots  in  their  hands. 
To  each  they  offer  gifts  after  his  will, 
Bread,  kingdoms,  stars,  and  sky  that  holds  them  all. 
I,  in  my  pleached  garden,  watched  the  pomp, 
Forgot  my  morning  wishes,  hastily 
Took  a  few  herbs  and  apples,  and  the  Day 
Turned  and  departed  silent.     I,  too  late, 
Under  her  solemn  fillet  saw  the  scorn." 

We  could  wish  that  Emerson  had  written  more 
blank  verse,  —  a  measure  suited  to  express  his  highest 
thought  and  imagination.  Probably,  however,  he  said 
all  that  he  had  to  say  in  verse  of  any  kind.  He  was 
not  one  to  add  a  single  line  for  the  sake  of  a  more 
liberal  product. 

He  is  thought  to  have  begun  so  near  the  top  that 
there  was  little  left  to  climb.  None  of  his  verse  is 
more  pregnant  than  that  which  came  in  the  first  glow, 
but  the  later  poems  are  free  from  those  grotesque 
sayings  which  illustrate  the  fact  that  humor  and  a 
lively  sense  of  the  absurd  often  are  of  slow  develop- 
ment in  the  brain  of  an  earnest  thinker.  There  was, 
it   must   be   owned,  a   tinge   of   provincial   arrogance, 


Days." 


Changes  in 
style. 


i68 


RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON. 


"The 
Sphinx  ' 
again. 


Strength 
and 

-weakness 
of  tran- 
scendental 


and  there  were  expressions  little  less  than  ludicrous, 
in  his  early  defiance  of  usage.  He  was  too  sincere 
a  personage  to  resort  to  the  grotesque  as  a  means  of 
drawing  attention.  Of  him,  the  leader,  this  at  least 
could  not  be  suspected.  Years  afterward  he  revised 
his  poems,  as  if  to  avoid  even  the  appearance  of  af- 
fectation. On  the  whole,  it  is  as  well  that  he  left 
"The  Sphinx"  unchanged;  that  remarkable  poem  is 
a  fair  gauge  of  its  author's  traits.  The  opening  is 
strongly  lyrical  and  impressive.  The  close  is  the 
flower  of  poesy  and  thought.  The  general  tone  is 
quaint  and  mystical.  Certain  passages,  however,  like 
that  beginning  "The  fiend  that  man  harries,"  are  cu- 
riously awkward,  and  mar  the  effect  of  an  original, 
almost  an  epochal,  poem.  This  would  not  be  ad- 
mitted by  the  old-fashioned  Emersonian,  —  never,  by 
any  chance,  a  poet  pure  and  simple,  —  who  makes  it 
a  point  of  faith  to  defend  the  very  passages  where 
the  master  nods.  Just  so  the  thick-and-thin  Brown- 
ingite,  who  testifies  his  adoration  by  counting  the 
nC s  and  n's  of  the  great  dramatist's  volumes,  and 
who,  also,  never  is  a  poet  pure  and  simple,  celebrates 
Mr.  Browning's  least  poetic  experiments  as  his  mas- 
terpieces. I  think  that  the  weakness  of  "transcen- 
dental "  art  is  as  fairly  manifest  in  Emerson's  first 
and  chief  collection  of  verse  as  were  its  felicities,  — 
the  former  belonging  to  the  school,  the  latter  to  the 
seer's  own  genius.  Poe,  to  whom  poetry  was  solely 
an  expression  of  beauty,  was  irritated  to  a  degree  not 
to  be  explained  by  contempt  for  all  things  East.  He 
extolled  quaintness,  and  justly  detested  obscurity.  He 
was  prejudiced  against  the  merits  of  such  poets  as 
Channing  and  Cranch  by  their  prophetic  bearing, 
which  he  berated  soundly  as  an  effort  to  set  up  as 
poets  "  of  unusual  depth  and  very  remarkable  powers 


SELF-CRITICISM. 


169 


of  mind."  Admitting  the  grace  of  one,  he  said  that  it 
was  "laughable  to  see  that  the  transcendental  poets, 
if  beguiled  for  a  minute  or  two  into  respectable  Eng- 
lish and  common-sense,  are  always  sure  to  remem- 
ber their  cue  just  as  they  get  to  the  end  of  their 
song,  and  round  off  with  a  bit  of  doggerel."  Their 
thought  was  the  "  cant  of  thought,"  in  adopting  which 
"  the  cant  of  phraseology  is  adopted  at  the  same 
time."  This  was  serviceable  criticism,  et  ab  hoste, 
though  Poe's  lack  of  moral,  and  keenness  of  artistic, 
sense  made  him  too  sure  of  the  insincerity  of  those 
who  place  conviction  above  expression.  And  Mr. 
James  sees  that  Emerson's  philosophy  was  "drunk 
in  by  a  great  many  fine  moral  appetites  with  a  sense 
of  intoxication."  The  seer  himself  was  intoxicated  at 
times,  and  spoke,  like  the  hasheesh-eaters,  with  what 
then  seemed  to  him  music  and  sanity.  In  a  more 
reflecting  season  he  excluded  from  his  select  edition 
certain  pieces  from  which  too  many  had  taken  their 
cues,  —  for  example,  the  "  Ode "  to  W.  H.  Channing, 
"The  World-Soul,"  and  "Tact."  The  Ode  begins 
finely  with  a  manner  caught  from  Ben  Jonson's  ode 
"  To  Himself,"  and  we  can  ill  spare  one  passage 
("  The  God  who  made  New  Hampshire ")  ;  but  was 
it  the  future  compiler  of  "  Parnassus "  who  preceded 
this  with  laughter-stirring  rhymes,  and  shortly  avowed 
that  "  Things  are  of  the  snake,"  and  again  that 
"  Things  are  in  the  saddle,  And  ride  mankind  "  ? 
Well,  he  lived  to  feel  that  to  poets,  "of  all  men,  the 
severest  criticism  is  due,"  and  that  "  Poetry  requires 
that  splendor  of  expression  which  carries  with  it  the 
proof  of  great  thoughts." 

But  the  forte  of  bardlings  is  the  foible  of  a  bard. 
Emerson  became  his  own  censor,  and  did  wisely  and 
well.     We  have  seen  that  his  art,  even  now,  upon  its 


Poe  on  this 
school. 


Philo- 
sophic 
"  intoxi- 
cation." 


Emerson 
his  own 
best  critic. 


170 


RALPH   WALDO  EMERSON. 


Essay  on 
Art. 


Its  chief 

canon. 


constructive  side,  must  often  seem  defective,  —  unsat- 
isfactory to  those  whose  love  of  proportion  is  a  moral 
instinct.  Many  poets  and  critics  will  feel  it  so.  The 
student  of  Emerson  learns  that  he,  too,  moved  upon 
their  plane,  but  would  not  be  confined  to  it.  More 
than  other  men,  he  found  himself  a  vassal  of  the  un- 
written law,  whether  his  impulse  lifted  him  above,  or 
sent  him  below,  the  plane  of  artistic  expression.  If 
he  could  not  sustain  the  concert-pitch  of  his  voice  at 
his  best,  he  certainly  knew  what  is  perfection,  and  said 
of  art  much  that  should  be  said.  He  was  not,  he  did 
not  wish  to  be,  primarily  an  artist :  he  borrowed  Art's 
aid  for  his  lofty  uses,  and  held  her  at  her  worth.  His 
essay  on  Art  would  be  pronounced  sound  by  a  Goethe 
or  a  Lessing,  though  such  men  probe  less  deep  for  the 
secret  principle  of  things,  and  deal  more  featly  with 
the  exterior.  Elsewhere  he  insists  that  we  must  "  dis- 
abuse us  of  our  superstitious  associations  with  place 
and  time,  with  number  and  size.  .  .  .  Where  the  heart 
is,  there  the  muses,  there  the  gods  sojourn.  ...  A 
great  man  makes  his  climate  genial  in  the  imagina- 
tion of  man,  and  its  air  the  beloved  element  of  all 
delicate  spirits."^  And  again  (like  Arnold)  he  speaks 
of  the  modernness  of  all  good  books  :  "  What  is  well 
done,  I  feel  as  if  I  did ;  what  is  ill  done,  I  reck  not 
of."  He  revised  his  prose  less  carefully,  for  republi- 
cation, than  his  verse,  and  doubtless  felt  surer  of  it. 
He  himself  would  have  been  the  first  to  declare,  as 
to  the  discordant  and  grotesque  portions  of  his  verse 
or  prose,  that  the  thought  was  proportionately  defec- 
tive, —  not  strong  and  pure  enough  to  insure  the  beauty 
of  the  art  which  was  its  expression.  Above  all  he 
knew,  he  confessed,  that  it  is  the  first  duty  of  a  poet 
to  express  his  thoughts  naturally,  counting  among  "  the 
traits  common  to  all  works  of  the  highest  art,  —  that 


PROSE   WRITINGS. 


171 


they  are  universally  intelligible,  that  they  restore  to  us 
the  simplest  states  of  mind."  This  was  his  own  canon. 
Where  he  failed  of  it,  he  might  not  surely  know  ;  where 
he  knew,  there  he  rebuked  himself.  He  struck  out,  in 
his  self-distrust,  many  things  of  value  to  those  who 
loved  his  verse.  We  dwell  with  profit  on  the  fact  that 
he  retained  so  little  that  should  be  stricken  out. 


It  is  but  a  foolish  surmise  whether  Emerson's  prose 
or  verse  will  endure  the  longer,  for  they  are  of  the 
same  stuff,  warp  and  woof,  and  his  ideality  crosses  and 
recrosses  each,  so  that  either  is  cloth-of-gold.  Of 
whichever  a  reader  may  first  lay  hold,  he  will  be  led 
to  examine  the  whole  fabric  of  the  author's  work.  Few 
writers,  any  one  of  whose  essays,  met  with  for  the  first 
time,  seems  more  like  a  revelation  !  It  will  not  be,  I 
think,  until  that  time  when  all  his  prose  has  passed 
into  a  large  book,  such  as  the  volume  we  call  Mon- 
taigne, that  its  full  strength  and  importance  can  be 
felt.  In  certain  respects  it  dwarfs  other  modern  writ- 
ing, and  places  him  among  the  great  essayists.  These 
are  not  the  efforts  of  a  reviewer  of  books  or  affairs, 
but  chapters  on  the  simplest,  the  greatest,  the  imme- 
morial topics,  those  that  lie  at  the  base  of  life  and 
wisdom  :  such  as  Love,  Experience,  Character,  Man- 
ners, Fate,  Power,  Worship  —  lastly,  Nature  herself, 
and  Art  her  ideal  counterpart.  If  to  treat  great  themes 
worthily  is  a  mark  of  greatness,  the  chooser  of  such 
themes  begins  with  the  instinct  of  great  design.  Ba- 
con's elementary  essays  excepted,  there  are  none  in 
English  of  which  it  can  be  more  truly  averred  that 
there  is  nothing  superfluous  in  them.  Compare  them 
with  the  rest  in  theme  and  method.     Carlyle,  outside 


His  pros* 
writings. 


"Nature," 
1836. 


"  Essays," 
First 
Series, 
1841. 


"  Essays," 
Second 
Series, 
1844. 


"  Miscella- 
nies," 
1849. 

"  Repre- 
sentative 
Men," 
1850. 

"  English. 

Traits," 

1856. 

"  Conduct 
o/Li/e," 
i860. 


172 


RALPH   WALDO  EMERSON. 


"  Letters 
and  Social 
Aims" 
1876. 


of  "  Sartor  Resartus  "  and  "  Hero-Worship,"  usually 
reviews  books,  histories,  individuals,  at  extreme  length, 
and  with  dramatic  comment  and  analysis.  Emerson 
treats  of  the  principles  behind  all  history,  and  his 
laconic  phrases  are  the  very  honey-cells  of  thought. 
There  are  let-downs  and  surplusage  even  in  Landor. 
Throughout  Emerson's  writings  each  word  is  of  value  ; 
they  are  the  discourse  of  one*who  has  digested  all  the 
worthy  books,  and  who  gives  us  their  results,  with 
latter-day  discoveries  of  his  own.  He  is  the"  citizen  of 
a  new  world,  observing  other  realms  and  eras  from  an 
unrestricted  point  of  view. 

The  intent  of  our  essayist  is  the  highest,  and  by  no 
means  that  of  writing  for  the  exercise  or  glory  of  au- 
thorship. "Fatal,"  he  declares,  "to  the  man  of  let- 
ters is  the  lust  of  display.  ...  A  mistake  of  the  main 
end  to  which  they  labor  is  incidental  to  literary  men, 
who,  dealing  with  the  organ  of  language  .  .  .  learn  to 
enjoy  the  pride  of  playing  with  this  splendid  engine, 
but  rob  it  of  its  almightiness  by  failing  to  work  with  it." 
He  estimates  books  at  their  worth.  They  "  are  for 
nothing  but  to  inspire.  I  had  better  never  see  a  book 
than  to  be  warped  by  its  attraction  clean  out  of  my 
own  orbit,  and  made  a  satellite  instead  of  a  system." 

Thus  the  thought  of  Style,  it  may  be,  should  enter 
into  the  mind  of  neither  writer  nor  reader.  Style  makes 
itself,  and  Emerson's  is  the  apothegmatic  style  of  one 
bent  upon  uttering  his  immediate  thoughts,  —  hence 
strong  in  sentences,  and  only  by  chance  suited  to  the 
formation  of  an  essay.  Each  sentence  is  an  idea,  an 
epigram,  or  an  image,  or  a  flash  of  spiritual  light.  His 
letters  to  Carlyle  show  that  he  was  at  one  time  caught 
by  the  manner  of  the  author  whose  character,  at  least, 
seemed  of  the  most  import  to  him.  This  was  but  a 
passing   trace.     When  he  was  fresh  from  the  schools, 


TERSE  AND  POETIC  STYLE. 


*73 


his  essays  were  structural  and  orderly,  but  more  ab- 
stract than  in  latter  years.  During  his  mature  and 
haply  less  spiritual  period,  had  he  cared  to  write  a 
history,  the  English  would  have  been  pure  English, 
the  narrative  racy  and  vigorous.  Portions  of  the 
"English  Traits"  make  this  plain.  Since  De,  Foe, 
where  have  we  found  anything  more  idiomatic  than  his 
account  of  Wordsworth  delivering  a  sonnet  ? 

"  This  recitation  was  so  unlooked  for  and  surprising,  — 
he,  the  old  Wordsworth,  standing  apart,  and  reciting  to  me 
in  a  garden-walk,  like  a  schoolboy  declaiming,  —  that  I  at 
first  was  near  to  laugh  ;  but  recollecting  myself,  that  I  had 
come  thus  far  to  see  a  poet,  and  he  was  chanting  poems  to 
me,  I  saw  that  he  was  right  and  I  was  wrong,  and  gladly 
gave  myself  up  to  hear." 

Note  also  Emerson's  account  of  an  ocean  voyage. 
For  charm  of  landscape-painting,  take  such  a  passage 
as  that,  in  the  second  essay  on  Nature,  beginning : 
"There  are  days  which  occur  in  this  climate."  But 
terseness  is  the  distinctive  feature  of  his  style.  "Men," 
he  says,  "  descend  to  meet."  "  We  are  all  discerners 
of  spirits."  "  He  [a  traveller]  carries  ruins  to  ruins." 
No  one  has  compressed  more  sternly  the  pith  of  his 
discourse. 

No  poet,  let  us  at  once  add,  has  written  prose  and 
shown  more  incontestably  his  special  attribute.  Emer- 
son's whole  argument  is  poetic,  if  that  work  is  poetic 
which  reaches  its  aim  through  the  analogies  of  things, 
and  whose  quick  similitudes  have  the  heat,  the  light, 
the  actinism,  of  the  day-beam,  and  of  which  the  lan- 
guage is  rhythmic  without  degeneracy,  —  clearly  the 
language  of  prose,  always  kept  from  weakness  by  the 
thought  which  it  conveys.  No  man's  writing  was  more 
truly  his  speech,  and  no  man's  speech  so  rhythmic  : 
"  There  are  Muses  in  the  woods  to-day,  and  whispers 


Native 
English. 


Compres- 
sion. 


The  prose 
of  a  poet. 


174 


RALPH   WALDO  EMERSON. 


to  be  heard  in  the  breezes  "  ;  and  again,  "  Hawthorne 
rides  well  his  horse  of  the  night."  As  he  spoke,  so 
he  wrote :  "  Give  me  health  and  a  day,  and  I  will 
make  the  pomp  of  emperors  ridiculous  "  ;  "  The  con- 
scious ship  hears  all  the  praise  "  ;  of  young  idealists, 
"  The  .tough  world  had  its  revenge  the  moment  they 
put  the  horses  of  the  sun  to  plough  in  its  furrow  " ; 
of  Experience,  "  was  it  Boscovich  who  found  out  that 
bodies  never  come  in  contact?  Well,  souls  never 
touch  their  objects.  An  innavigable  sea  washes  with 
silent  waves  between  us  and  the  things  we  aim  at  and 
converse  with."  In  the  same  essay,  —  "  Dream  de- 
livers us  to  dream,  and  there  is  no  end  to  illusion. 
Life  is  a  train  of  moods  like  a  string  of  beads,  and  as 
we  pass  through  them,  they  prove  to  be  many-colored 
lenses  which  paint  the  world  their  own  hue."  *  And 
of  Love's  world,  with  the  cadences  of  Ecclesiastes,  — 
"  When  the  day  was  not  long  enough,  but  the  night, 
too,  must  be  consumed.  .  .  .  When  the  moonlight  was 
a  pleasing  fever,  and  the  stars  were  letters,  and  the 
flowers  ciphers,  and  the  air  was  coined  into  song ; 
when  all  business  seemed  impertinence,  all  the  men 
and  women  running  to  and  fro  in  the  streets  mere 
pictures."  But  to  show  the  poetry  of  Emerson's  prose 
is  to  give  the  whole  of  it ;  these  essays  are  of  the  few 
which  make  us  tolerate  the  conceit  of  "  prose  poems." 
Their  persistent  recourse  to  imagery  and  metaphor, 
their  suggestions  of  the  secret  relations  of  things,  at 
times  have  subjected  them  to  the  charge  of  being  ob- 
scure. The  fault  was  not  in  the  wine  :  — 
"  Hast  thou  a  drunken  soul  ? 
Thy  bane  is  in  thy  shallow  skull,  not  in  my  silver  bowl  !" 


i^Life,  like  a  dome  of  many-colored  glass, 
Stains  the  white  radiance  of  eternity." 

Shelley's  "  Adonais." 


SECULAR  ESSAYS. 


175 


In  mature   years  the  essayist  pays  more  regard  to 
life  about  him,  to  the  world  as  it  is ;  he  is  more  equa- 
torial, less  polar  and  remote.     His  insight  betrays  it- 
self in  every-day  wisdom.     He  is  the  shrewd,  the  be- 
nignant, the  sagacious,  Emerson,  writing  with  pleasant 
aptitude,   like  Hesiod  or  Virgil,  of  domestic    routine, 
and  again  of  the  Conduct  of   Life,    of   Manners,    Be- 
havior, Prudence,  Grace.     This  is  in   the  philosophic 
order  of  progress,  from  the  first  principles  to  the  ap- 
plication  of   them.     Some  of   his   followers,  however, 
take  him  to   task,   unwilling  that   the   master   should 
venture  beyond   the   glory  of  his  cloud.     As  for  his 
unique  treatises  upon  Behavior,  it  was  natural  that  he 
should  be  led  to  think  upon  that  topic,  since  in  gen- 
tle   bearing,   in    his    sweetness,    persuasiveness,    and 
charm  of  smile  and  voice,  he  was  not  excelled  by  any 
personage  of  our  time,    and  what  he  said  of  it  is  of 
more  value  than  the  sayings  of  those  who  think  such 
a  matter  beneath  his  regard.     His  views  of  civic  duty 
and  concerning  the  welfare  of   the  Republic   are  the 
best  rejoinder  to  his  early  strictures  upon  Homer  and 
Shakespeare  for  the  temporal   and   local   features   of 
their  master-works.     As   a  critic   he  was  ever  expect- 
ant, on  the  lookout  for  something  good  and  new,  and 
sometimes   found  the   one   good    thing  in    a   man    or 
work  and  valued   it  unduly.     When  he  made  a  com- 
plete examination,  as  in  his  chapter  on  Margaret  Ful- 
ler,   he    excelled    as    a    critic    and    delineator.      Par- 
nassus is  not  judicial,  but  oddly  made  up  of  his  own 
likings,  yet  the  best  rules  of  criticism  are  to  be  found 
in    its    preface.      With    the    exception    of    "English 
Traits,"  he  published  no  long  treatise  upon  a  single 
theme.     His    general    essays   and   lectures,   however, 
constitute   a   treatise   upon  Man   and  Nature,  and  of 
themselves  would   serve   as  America's   adequate  con- 


Seethe 
"  Complete 
Works," 


"  Parnas- 
sus,"  1874. 


176 


RALPH   WALDO  EMERSON. 


Our  most 
typical 
and  inspir- 
ing poet. 


tribution  to  the  English  literature  of  his  period.  We 
are  told  of  an  unprinted  series  of  his  essays  that  may 
be  grouped  as  a  book  on  the  Natural  History  of  the 
Intellect.  Should  these  see  the  light,  it  would  be 
curious  to  compare  them  with  the  work  of  some  pro- 
fessional logician  —  with  the  standard  treatise  o£  Pres- 
ident Porter,  for  instance  —  upon  a  similar  theme. 
Something  in  quantity  may  yet  be  added  to  Emerson's 
literary  remains.  But  it  will  not  differ  in  quality; 
we  have  had  the  gist  of  it :  for  he  was  a  writer  who, 
though  his  essays  were  the  fruit  of  a  prolonged  life, 
never  wrote  himself  out.  Often  an  author  has  gained 
repute  by  one  or  two  original  works,  while  his  ordi- 
nary efforts,  if  not  devoted  to  learned  or  scientific  re- 
search, have  been  commonplace.  The  flame  of  Emer- 
son's intellect  never  fades  or  flickers,  and  never  irks 
us.  It  burns  with  elemental  light,  neither  of  artifice 
nor  of  occasion,  serene  as  that  of  a  star,  and  with  an 
added  power  to  heat  the  distance  which  receives  it. 


VI. 

In  summing  up  the  traits  of  Emerson  one  almost 
ceases  to  be  critical,  lest  the  highest  praise  mayjot 
be  quite  undue.  More  than  when  Bion  died,  the 
glades  and  towns  lament  him,  for  he  left  no  heir  to 
the  Muse  which  he  taught  his^-  pupils.  In  certain  re- 
spects he  was  our  most  typical  poet,  having  the  finest 
intuition  and  a  living  faith  in  it,  —  and  because  there 
was  a  sure  intellect  behind  his  verse,  and  because  his 
influence  affected  not  simply  the  tastes  and  emotions, 
but  at  last  the  very  spirit,  of  his  countrymen.  He 
began  where  many  poets  end,  seeking  at  once~the 
upper  air,  the  region  of  pure  thought  and  ideality. 
His  speech  was  wisdom,  and  his  poesy  its  exhalation. 


FREE,    TYPICAL  AND  INSPIRING. 


177 


When  he  failed  in  either,  it  seemed  to  be  through 
excess  of  divining.  His  triumphs  were  full  of  promise 
for  those  who  dare  to  do  their  best.  He  was  as  far 
above  Carlyle  as  the  affairs  of  the  soul  and  universe 
are  above  those  of  the  contemporary,  or  even  the 
historic,  world.  His  problem,  like  that  of  Archimedes, 
was  more  than  the  taking  of  cities  and  clash  of  arms. 
The  poet  is  unperturbed  by  temporal  distractions  ;  yet 
poets  and  dreamers,  concerned  with  the  ideal,  share 
in  the  world's  battle  equally  with  men  of  action  and 
practical  life.  Only,  while  the  latter  fight  on  the 
ground,  the  idealists,  like  the  dauntless  ghosts  of  the 
Huns  and  Romans,  lift  the  contest  to  the  air.  Emer- 
son was  the  freest  and  most  ideal  of  them  all,  and 
what  came  to  him  by  inheritance  or  prophetic  forecast 
he  gave  like  a  victor.  He  strove  not  to  define  tne 
creeds,  but  to  stimulate  the  intellect  and  purpose  of 
those  who  are  to  make  the  future.  If  poetry  be  that 
which  shapes  and  elevates,  his  own  was  poetry  in- 
deed. To  know  the  heart  of  New  England  you  must 
hear  the  songs  of  his  compeers  ;  but  listening  to  those 
of  Emerson,  the  east  and  west  have  yielded  to  the 
current  of  its  soul. 

The  supreme  poet  will  be  not  alone  a  seer,  but  also 
a  persistent  artist  of  the  beautiful.  Of  those  who 
come  before  the  time  for  such  a  poet  is  ripe,  Long- 
fellow on  the  whole  has  done  the  most  to  foster  the 
culture  of  poetry  among  us  as  a  liberal  art.  Emerson 
has  given  us  thought,  the  habit  of  thinking,  the  will 
to  think  for  ourselves.  He  drained  the  vats  of  poli- 
tics and  philosophy,  for  our  use,  of  all  that  was  sweet 
and  fructifying,  and  taught  his  people  self-judgment, 
self-reliance,  and  to  set  their  courses  by  the  stars. 
He  placed  chief  value  upon  those  primitive  laws 
which  are  the  only  sure  basis  of  national  law  and  let- 
12 


Emerson 
and  Long- 
fellow. 


1 78 


RALPH   WALDO  EMERSON. 


"  A  poet 
hidden  in 
the  light  of 
thought." 


"  Unlod- 
iedjoy-" 


ters.  And  as  a  poet,  his  verse  was  the  sublimation 
of  his  rarest  mood,  that  changed  as  water  into  cloud, 
catching  the  first  beams  of  sunrise  on  its  broken 
edges,  yet  not  without  dark  and  vaguely  blending 
spots  between.  Emerson  and  Longfellow  came  at  the 
parting  of  the  ways.  They  are  of  the  very  few  whom 
we  now  recognize  as  the  true  founders  of  an  American 
literature.  No  successors  with  more  original  art  and 
higher  imagination  can  labor  to  more  purpose.  If  the 
arrow  hits  its  mark,  the  aim  was  at  the  bowstring ; 
the  river  strengthens  and  broadens,  but  the  sands  of 
gold  wash  down  from  near  its  source. 

Not  a  few  are  content  with  that  poetry  which  re- 
turns again  and  again  to  its  primal  conceptions,  yet 
suggests  infinite  pathways  and  always  inspires,  —  the 
poetry  of  a  hermitage  whose  Lar  is  Nature,  and  whose 
well-spring  flows  with  clear  and  shining  Thought.  To 
such,  —  who  care  less  for  sustained  flights  of  objective 
song,  who  can  withdraw  themselves  from  passion  and 
dramatic  life,  who  gladly  accept  isolated  cadences  and 
scattered,  though  exquisite,  strains  of  melody  in  lieu 
of  symphonic  music  "  wandering  on  as  loth  to  die,"  — 
Emerson  will  seem  the  most  precious  of  our.  native 
poets.  He  will  not  satisfy  those  who  look  for  the 
soul  incarnate  in  sensuous  and  passionate  being. 
Such  readers,  with  Professor  Dowden,  find  him  the 
type  of  the  New  World  transcendentalist,  the  creature 
of  the  drying  American  climate,  one  "  whose  nervous 
energy  has  been  exalted,"  so  "  that  he  loves  light 
better  than  warmth."  He  is  not  the  minstrel  for 
those  who  would  study  men  in  action  and  suffering, 
rather  than  as  heirs  to  knowledge  and  the  raptured 
mind.  He  is  not  a  warrior,  lover,  raconteur,  drama- 
tist, but  an  evangelist  and  seer.  The  greatest  poet 
must  be  all   in  one,  and  I  have   said   that   Emerson 


A   FORERUNNER. 


179 


was  among  the  foremost  to  avow  it.  Modern  bards 
poorly  satisfy  him,  being  meagre  of  design,  and  fail- 
ing to  guide  and  console.  Wordsworth  was  an  ex- 
ception, yet  he  had  "written  longer  than  he  was 
inspired."  Tennyson,  with  all  his  tune  and  color, 
"climbs  no  mount  of  vision."  Even  Shakespeare  was 
too  traditional,  though  one  learns  from  him  that  "  tra- 
dition supplies  a  better  fable  than  any  invention  can." 
In  face  of  the  greatest  he  felt  that  "  the  world  still 
wants  its  poet-priest,  a  reconciler,  who  shall  not  trifle 
with  Shakespeare  the  player,  nor  shall  grope*  in  graves 
with  Swedenborg  the  mourner ;  but  who  shall  see, 
speak,  and  act  with  equal  inspiration."  Thus  clearly 
he  conceived  of  the  poet's  office,  and  equally  was  he 
assured  that  he  himself  was  not,  and  could  not  be, 
the  perfect  musician.  He  chose  the  part  of  the  fore- 
runner and  inspirer,  and  when  the  true  poet  shall 
come  to  America,  it  will  be  because  such  an  one  as 
Emerson  has  gone  before  him  and  prepared  the  way 
for  his  song,  his  vision,  and  his  recognition. 


Emerson's 
conception 
0/  the 
future  . 
bard. 


CHAPTER    VI 


HENRY  WADSWORTH   LONGFELLOW. 


Fortunate 
in  life  and 
death. 


His  mis- 
sion apos- 
tolic. 


OUR  poet  of  grace  and  sentiment  left  us  in  the  af- 
ter-glow of  an  almost  ideal  career.  He  had  lived 
at  the  right  time,  and  with  the  gift  of  years  ;  and  he 
died  before  the  years  came  for  him  to  say,  I  have  no 
pleasure  in  them.  Not  all  the  daughters  of  music 
were  brought  low.  He  scarcely  could  have  realized 
that  people  were  calling  his  work  elementary,  that 
men  whose  originality  had  isolated  them,  like  Emer- 
son and  Browning,  —  and  even  metrical  experts,  the 
inventors  of  new  modes,  —  were  gaining  favor  with  a 
public  which  had  somewhat  outgrown  him;  that  he 
was  to  be  slighted  for  the  very  qualities  which  had 
made  him  beloved  and  famous,  or  that  other  quali- 
ties, too  long  needed,  were  to  be  overvalued  as  if 
partly  for   the    need's    sake. 

But  they  are  wrong  who  make  light  of  Longfellow's 
service  as  an  American  poet.  His  admirers  may  form 
no  longer  a  critical  majority,  yet  he  surely  helped  to 
quicken  the  New  World  sense  of  beauty,  and  to  lead 
a  movement  which  precedes  the  rise  of  a  national 
school.  I  think  that  the  poet  himself,  reading  his 
own  sweet  songs,  felt  the  apostolic  nature  of  his  mis- 
sion,—  that  it  was  religious,  in  the  etymological  sense 
of  the  word,  the  binding  back  of  America  to  the  Old 
World  taste  and  imagination.     Our  true  rise  of   Poe- 


CHARM  OF  HIS  EARLY  WO 


& 


181 


try  may  be  dated  from  Longfellow's  method  of  excit- 
ing an  interest  in  it,  as  an  expression  of  beauty  and 
feeling,  at  a  time  when  his  countrymen  were  ready 
for  something  more  various  and  human  than  the  cur- 
rent meditations  on  nature.  It  was  inevitable  that 
he  should  first  set  his  face  toward  a  light  beyond  the 
sea,  and  I  have  sa$  that  his  youthful  legend  aptly 
was  Outre  Mer.  An',  escape  was  in  order  from  the  as- 
ceticism which  two  centuries  had  both  modified  and 
confirmed.  How  could  this  be  effected  ?  Not  at  once 
by  the  absolute  presentation  of  beauty.  A  Keats, 
pledged  to  this  alone,  could  not  have  propitiated  the 
ancestral  spirit,  f Puritanism  was-  opposed  to  beauty 
as  a  strange  god,  and  to  sentiment  as  an  idle  thing. 
Longfellow  so  adapted  the  beauty  and  sentiment  of 
other  lands  to  the  convictions  of  his  people,  as  to 
beguile  their  reason  through  the  finer  senses,  and 
speedily  to  satisfy  them  that  loveliness  and  righteous- 
ness may  go  together.  His  poems,  like  pictures  seen 
on  household  walls,  were  a  protest  against  barrenness 
and  the  symptoms  of  a  new  taste. 

They  made  their  way  more  readily,  also,  by  their 
response  to  the  inherited  Anglo  -  Saxon  instincts  of 
his  own  region.  His  early  predilections,  strengthened 
during  a  stay  in  Germany,  were  chiefly  for  the  poe- 
try and  romance  of  that  land.  He  read  his  heart  in 
its  songs,  which  he  so  loved  to  translate  for  us.  A 
new  generation  may  be  at  a  loss  to  conceive  the 
effect  of  Longfellow's  work  when  it  first  began  to  ap- 
pear. I  may  convey  something  of  this  by  what  is  at 
once  a  memory  and  an  illustration.  Take  the  case  of 
a  child  whose  Sunday  outlook  was  restricted,  in  a  de- 
caying Puritan  village,  to  a  wooden  meeting-house  of 
the  old  Congregational  type.  The  interior  —  plain,  col- 
orless, rigid  with  dull  white  pews  and  dismal  galleries 


Effect  of 
his  early 
works. 


A  charm 
recalled 
and  ill ua~ 
trated. 


182 


HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW. 


His  genius 
not  crea- 
tive, but 
the  fos- 
terer of 
taste  and 
ideality. 


—  increased  the  spiritual  starvation  of  a  young  na- 
ture unconsciously  longing  for  color  and  variety. 
Many  a  child  like  this  one,  on  a  first  holiday  visit 
to  the  town,  seeing  the  vine-grown  walls,  the  roofs 
and  arches,  of  a  graceful  Gothic  church,  has  felt  a 
sense  of  something  rich  and  strange ;  and  many,  now 
no  longer  children,  can  remember  that  the  impres- 
sion upon  entrance  was  such  as  the  stateliest  cathe- 
dral now  could  not  renew.  The  columns  and  tinted 
walls,  the  ceiling  of  oak  and  blue,  the  windows  of 
gules  and  azure  and  gold,  —  the  service,  moreover, 
with  its  chant  and  organ-roll,  —  all  this  enraptured  and 
possessed  them.  To  the  one  relief  hitherto  afforded 
them,  that  of  nature's  picturesqueness,  —  which  even 
Calvinism  endured  without  compunction,  —  was  added 
a  new  joy,  a  glimpse  of  the  beauty  and  sanctity  of  hu- 
man art.  A  similar  delight  awaited  the  first  readers  of 
Longfellow's  prose  and  verse.  Here  was  a  painter  and 
romancer  indeed,  who  had  journeyed  far  and  returned 
with  gifts  for  all  at  home,  and  who  promised  often  and 
again  to 

"sing  a  more  wonderful  song 

Or  tell  a  more  marvellous  tale." 

And  thus  it  chanced  that,  well  as  he  afterward  sang 
of  his  own  sea  and  shore,  he  now  is  said  to  have 
been  the  least  national  of  our  poets.  His  verse,  it  is 
true,  was  like  a  pulsatory  cord,  sustaining  our  new- 
born ideality  with  nourishment  from  the  mother-land, 
until  it  grew  to  vigor  of  its  own.  Yet  he  was  more 
widely  read  than  his  associates,  and  seemed  to  for- 
eigners the  incumbent  American  laureate.  His  native 
themes,  like  some  of  Tennyson's,  were  chosen  with 
deliberation  and  as  if  for  their  availability.  But  from 
the  first  he  was  a  poet  of  sentiment,  and  equally  a 
craftsman  of  unerring  taste.      He  always  gave  of  his 


THE  HOUSE  BEAUTIFUL. 


183 


best ;  neither  toil  nor  trouble  could  dismay  him  until 
art  had  done  its  perfect  work.  It  was  a  kind  of  gen- 
ius, —  his  sure  perception  of  the  fit  and  attractive. 
Love  flows  to  one  whose  work  is  lovely.  Besides,  he 
was  a  devotee  to  one  calling,  —  not  a  critic,  journal- 
ist, lecturer,  or  man  of  affairs,  —  and  even  his  prose 
romances  were  akin  to  poems.  A  long  and  spotless 
life  was  pledged  to  song,  and  verily  he  had  his  re- 
ward. Successors  may  find  a  weakness  in  his  work, 
but  who  can  rival  him  in  bearing  and  reputation  ? 
His  worldly  wisdom  was  of  the  gospel  kind,  so  gently 
tempered  as  to  breed  no  evil.  His  life  and  works 
together  were  an  edifice  fairly  built,  —  the  House  Beau- 
tiful, whose  air  is  peace,  where  repose  and  calm  are 
ministrant,  and  where  the  raven's  croak,  symbol  of 
the  unrest  of  a  more  perturbed  genius,  is  never  heard. 
Thus  the  clerkly  singer  fulfilled  his  office,  —  which 
was  not  in  the  least  creative,  —  and  had  the  tributes 
he  most  desired :  love  and  honor  during  his  life-time, 
and  the  assurance  that  no  song  of  his  took  flight  but 
to  rest  again  and  again  "in  the  heart  of  a  friend." 

II. 

Poets,  like  the  cicalas,  have  occasion  to  envy  those 
who  compass  their  song  and  sustenance  together. 
Few  can  pledge  with  Longfellow  their  lives,  or  even 
frequent  hours,  to  the  labor  they  delight  in.  There 
was,  in  fact,  an  "  opening,"  —  a  need  for  just  the  ser- 
vice he  could  render.  The  circumstances  of  his  birth 
and  training  were  propitious  and  worked  to  one  end. 
Neither  he  nor  Hawthorne  was  the  mere  offspring  of 
an  environment.  There  was  nothing  special  in  the 
little  down-east  school  of  Bowdoin,  sixty  years  ago,  to 
breed  the  leaders  of  our  imaginative  prose  and  verse. 


A  n  auspi- 
cious time. 


1 84 


HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW. 


Henry 
Wads- 
worth 
Longfel- 
low :  born 
in  Port- 
land, Me., 
Feb.  27, 
1807. 


But  the  time  was  ripe ;  there  was  an  unspoken  de- 
mand for  richer  life  and  thought,  to  which  such  na- 
tures, and  the  intellects  of  Channing  and  Emerson, 
were  sure  to  respond.  And  the  concurrence  certainly 
was  special :  that  Longfellow,  descended  from  Pilgrim 
and  Puritan  stock,  the  child  of  a  cultured  household, 
should  be  born  not  only  with  a  poet's  voice  and  ear, 
but  with  an  aptitude  for  letters  amounting  to  a  sixth 
sense,  —  a  bookishness  assimilative  as  that  of  Hunt 
or  Lamb  ;  that  he  should  be  reared  in  a  typical  East- 
ern town,  open  alike  to  polite  influences  and  to  the 
freshness  and  beauty  of  the  northern  sea ;  that  such 
a  youth,  buoyant  and  manly,  but  averse  to  the  coarser 
sports,  gentle,  pure,  —  one  who  in  France  would  have 
become  at  first  an  abbe,  —  should  in  New  England 
be  made  a  college  professor  at  nineteen,  and  commis- 
sioned to  visit  Europe  and  complete  his  studies ;  that 
ten  years  later,  having  ended  the  pleasant  drudgery 
of  his  apprenticeship,  he  should  find  himself  settled 
for  life  at  Harvard,  the  centre  of  learning,  and  under 
few  obligations  that  did  not  assist,  rather  than  im- 
pede, his  chosen  ministry  of  song.  Here  he  was  to 
have  health,  friendship,  ease,  the  opportunity  for  travel, 
abundant  and  equal  work  and  fame,  with  scarcely  an 
abrupt  turn,  or  flurry,  or  drought  or  storm,  to  the  very 
end.  Even  his  duties  served  in  the  direction  of  a 
literary  bent,  confirming  his  mastery  of  languages 
whose  poetry  and  romance  were  his  treasure-house. 
He  wrote  his  text-books  at  an  age  when  most  poets 
go  a-gypsying.  When  twenty-six,  he  made  his  trans- 
lation of  the  "  Coplas  de  Manrique,"  —  a  rendering 
so  grave  and  sonorous  that,  if  now  first  printed,  it 
would  be  caught  up  like  FitzGerald's  "  Rubaiyat  of 
Omar,"  instead  of  going  to  the  paper  mill.  It  indi- 
cated, more  than  his  original  work  of  this  period,  that 


PROSE  ROMANCES. 


185 


a  true  poetic  method  was  forming  in  a  country  where 
Berkeley's  muse  thus  far  had  made  no  course  of  em- 
pire. A  few  essays,  always  on  literature  or  the  lan- 
guages, complete  the  round  of  his  miscellanies,  the 
last  being  contributed  to  a  review  in  1840.  After 
that  time  he  gave  up  all  critical  writing  whatsoever. 

Outre-Mer,  a  young  poet's  sketch-book,  reports  his 
first  transition  from  cloister  life  to  travel  and  expe- 
rience. It  is  a  journey  of  sentiment,  if  not  a  senti- 
mental journey,  and  made  in  the  blithesome  spirit  of 
a  troubadour.  All  the  world  was  Arcady,  —  a  land 
of  beauty  and  romance  ;  and  these  he  found,  caring 
for  nothing  else,  in  sunny  nooks  of  France,  Italy,  and 
Spain,  as  deftly  as  the  botanist  picks  out  his  ferns 
and  forest  flowers.  Our  poet's  herbarium  had  a  gift 
to  keep  its  blossoms  unfaded.  His  road-glasses  illu- 
minate the  wayside  :  our  modern  travellers  use  stronger 
lenses,  and  see  things  through  and  through,  but  with 
the  old  illusions  we  have  lost  the  best  of  all  things 
—  zest.  Hyperion  showed  what  changes  four  years 
can  bring  about  while  still  the  man  is  young:  it  is 
the  thoughtful,  and  somewhat  too  fond,  fantasy  of 
the  same  pilgrim  after  more  knowledge  of  the  verities 
of  life.  The  atmosphere  of  this  book  is  that  of  Swit- 
zerland and  Germany ;  but  its  shadows  came  from  the 
maker's  heart.  He  had  been  bereaved.  The  opening 
phrase  is  grief,  a  poet's  grief,  that  consoles  itself  with 
imagery :  "  The  setting  of  a  great  hope  is  like  the 
setting  of  the  sun.  .  .  .  We  look  forward  into  the 
coming  lonely  night.  The  soul  withdraws  into  itself. 
Then  stars  arise,  and  the  night  is  holy."  This  pre- 
cise, epicurean  touch,  the  application  of  art  to  feeling, 
was  new  in  our  authorship.  Void  of  real  anguish  or 
passion,  it  still  suggested  an  ideal,  —  a  purpose  be- 
yond mere  book-craft.     The  sketches,  diversified  with 


Works  in 
prose : 
"  Outre- 
Mer" 
1835- 


Hyperi- 
*,"  1839. 


1 86 


HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW. 


Influence 
of  Richter 
andHeine. 


"The 
crott  of 
Youth." 


not  too  frequent  musing,  the  wedding  of  sound  to 
sense,  the  daintiness  of  words,  the  feeble  plot,  all  bear 
witness  that  "  Hyperion  "  is  the  work  of  an  idyllist. 
The  vague  manner,  with  its  impression  of  rest  sought 
in  restlessness,  and  even  the  broken  story,"  were  bor- 
rowed, doubtless,  from  "  Titan."  The  book  naturally 
became  the  companion  of  all  romantic  pilgrims  of  the 
Rhine,  for  the  true  German  spirit  is  here.;  its  senti- 
ment and  fancy  alike  are  seized  by  a  master  of  the 
picturesque.  He  "knew  the  beauteous  river  all  by 
heart,  —  every  rock  and  ruin,  every  echo,  every  le- 
gend. The  ancient  castles,  .  .  .  they  were  all  his ; 
for  his  thoughts  dwelt  in  them,  and  the  wind  told  him 
tales."  With  Jean  Paul  we  have  Heine,  also,  who 
might  have  conceived  the  grotesque  episode  of  Frau 
Kranich's  "tea"  in  Ems.  The  romance  and  spoon- 
ing of  "Hyperion,"  and  its  moral  conclusions,  are 
food  for  adolescents  \  but  it  is  easier  to  laugh  at 
youth  than  to  possess  it.  And  this  is  Longfellow's 
youth  throughout,  —  the  frankest  of  confessions.  Paul 
Flemming  "buried  himself  in  books;  in  old  dusty 
books."  Read  the  list  of  them,  from  the  Nibelun- 
genlied  down,  and  see  the  diet  that  he  garnished  with 
grapes  and  Liebfrauenmilch  and  love-making  and 
moonlight  dreams.  "  How  beautiful  it  is  to  love  !  " 
Ah  !  how  happy  to  be  young,  and  in  love  j  to  have 
known  sorrow,  and  to  use  it  as  a  foil ;  to  visit  and 
read  the  great  world,  yet  not  to  be  corrupted  by  it, 
still  to  keep  a  pure  heart  that  has  no  taste  for  reck- 
lessness and  vice  ;  through  all  to  recall  one  lesson  : 
"  Look  not  mournfully  into  the  Past.  It  comes  not 
back  again.  Wisely  improve  the  Present.  It  is  thine. 
Go  forth  to  meet  the  shadowy  Future,  without  fear, 
and  with  a  manly  heart." 

The  chief  import  of  the  poet's  romances  was  their 


A    BORN  ROMANTICIST. 


187 


bearing  upon  his  own  purpose,  j  He  fixed  his  rules  of 
!    life  by  writing   them   down.      His   second    maxim   is 
j    found   in  Kavanagh,    a  tale  with   less  freshness   than 
/    "Hyperion,"  but  fashioned  with  the  hand  of  greater 
mastery,  that  of   a   writer  in   his  prime.     Its   person- 
ages are  more  distinctly  drawn,   and  it  was  his  brief 
and   nearest   approach   to  a  novel.     We  have  a  tran- 
script of  New  England  village  life,  an  atmosphere  of 
breeding  and  refinement,  and  some  pertinent  criticism 
on  literary  and  social  topics.     As  before,  the  gist  of 
the  tale  is  in  a  text,  placed,  with  due  regard  to  con- 
vention, at  the  beginning:  — 

j     "The  flighty  purpose  never  is  o'ertook 
1  Unless  the  deed  go  with  it." 

This  bit  of  wisdom  had  been  deeply  considered  by  the 
author.  By  way  of  strengthening  himself  against  a 
dreamer's  temptation  to  be  derelict,  he  worked  it,  one 
might  say,  into  this  "  sampler  "  of  a  tale.  Those  who 
are  fond  of  citing  the  formula,  that  genius  is  only  a 
talent  for  persistent  work,  have  reason  to  place  our 
poet  well  in  the  van  of  their  examples.  Yet  I  fancy 
\  that  only  men  of  talent  will  heartily  subscribe  to  this 
definition.  Be  this  as  it  may,  Longfellow's  prose  tales 
show  us  his  equipment,  and  give  the  clew  to  his  well- 
adjusted  life.  It  was  plain,  also,  that  he  was  a  born 
romanticist,  in  full  sympathy  with  the  German  school. 
We  shall  see  that,  as  a  poet,  he  followed  a  romantic 
method,  to  the  disapproval  of  those  who  feel  that 
nothing  in  the  New  World  should  be  done  as  it  has 
been  done  elsewhere.  It  is  difficult,  however,  to  ex- 
plain why  even  things  at  home  should  not  be  treated 
according  to  the  genius  of  the  designer.  After  strange 
experiments,  we  just  now  are  discovering  that  the 
colonial  architecture,  so  much  like  that  of  Cromwell's 


The  poefs 
rules  of 
life. 

"  Kava- 
nagh," 
1849. 


Romantic 
tendency. 


i88 


HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW. 


Poetical 
works. 


"  Voices 
of  the 
Night," 
1839. 


Foreign 
influences. 


England,  is  of  all  our  styles  the  best  adapted  to  the 
Atlantic  States ;  and  it  still  becomes  us  to  be  modest 
in  denning  the  types  that  American  art  and  poetry 
finally  will  assume.  The  critical  question,  I  take  it, 
is  not  what  fashion  should  be  outlawed,  but  whether 
the  thing  done  is  good  of  its  kind. 

Nothing  afterward  tempted  Longfellow  from  poetic 
composition,  except  the  illustrations  of  the  Poetry  of 
Europe,  many  of  which  were  his  own  translations,  and, 
late  in  life,  the  diversion  of  editing  Poems  of  Places, 
and  the  heroic  labor  of  his  complete  version  of  "  The 
Divine  Comedy,"  a  work  to  which  I  shall  refer  again. 


III. 

Longfellow's  juvenile  poems  have  been  collected 
recently.  Those  printed,  before  his  graduation,  in 
"  The  Literary  Gazette,"  resemble  the  verse  of  Bryant 
and  Percival,  the  former  of  whom  he  looked  upon  as 
his  master.  Tracings  of  browsing  in  the  usual  pas- 
ture grounds  are  strangely  absent :  I  sometimes  won- 
der if  he  had  an  early  taste  for  the  Elizabethan  poets, 
or,  indeed,  for  any  English  worthy,  since  no  modern 
author  has  shown  fewer  signs  of  this  in  youth.  The 
Voices  of  the  Night,  his  own  first  collection,  was  post- 
poned until  after  a  long  experience  of  translation  and 
prose  work.  It  appeared  in  his  thirty-third  year,  and 
met  with  instant  favor.  Only  nine  new  pieces  were 
in  the  book;  these,  with  the  translations  following, 
have  characteristics  that  his  verse  continued  to  dis- 
play. The  Prelude  recalls  that  of  Heine's  third  edi- 
tion of  the  "  Reisebilder"  {Das  ist  dcr  alte  Marchen- 
wald),  then  just  published.  Later  pieces  show  that 
Longfellow  caught  the  manner  of  this  poet,  whose 
principles    he    severely    condemned.     The    German's 


EARLY  LYRICS  AND  BALLADS. 


189 


rhythm  and  reverie  were  repeated  in  "The  Day  is 
Done,"  "The  Bridge,"  "Twilight,"  etc.,  but  not  his 
passion  and  scorn.  The  influence  of  Uhland  is  equally 
manifest  elsewhere.  Prototypes  of  Longfellow's  ma- 
turer  work  are  found  in  "  The  Reaper,"  "  The  Psalm 
of  Life,"  and  "The  Beleaguered  City."  "The  Mid- 
night Mass  for  the  Dying  Year,"  against  which  Poe 
brought  a  mincing  charge  of  plagiarism,  is  as  strong 
and  conjuring  as  anything  its  author  lived  to  write. 
The  Translations  deserved  high  praise.  The  stately 
"  Coplas  "  re-appears.  Various  renderings  from  Ger- 
man lyric  poets,  such  as  "  The  Happiest  Land,"  "  Be- 
ware," and  "  Into  the  Silent  Land,"  were  new  origi- 
nals, examples  of  a  talent  peculiarly  his  own.  Given 
a  task  which  he  liked,  —  with  a  pattern  supplied  by 
another,  — and  few  could  equal  him.  He  made  his 
copies  in  various  measures  and  from  many  tongues. 
An  essay  in  hexameter,  the  version  of  TegneVs  "  Chil- 
dren of  the  Lord's  Supper,"  preceded  his  original 
poems  in  that  form.  Even  after  completing  his 
"Dante,"  he  loved  to  toy  with  such  work.  I  have 
heard  him  say  that  he  longed  to  make  an  English 
translation  of  Homer,  upon  the  method  which  Voss 
had  used  to  such  advantage. 

His  volume  of  1841,  Ballads  and  Other  Poems,  may 
be  likened  to  Tennyson's  volume  of  the  ensuing 
year,  in  that  it  confirmed  its  author's  standing  and 
indicated  the  full  extent  of  his  genius  as  a  poet.  It 
was  choice  in  its  way,  suggesting  taste  rather  than 
fertility ;  choicely  presented,  also,  for  with  it  came  the 
fashion,  new  to  this  country,  of  printing  verse  at- 
tractively and  in  a  shape  that  seeks  the  hand.  The 
poet's  matter,  if  often  gleaned  from  foreign  litera- 
tures, was  novel  to  his  readers,  and  his  style  distinct 
from  that  of   any  English   contemporary.     The    book 


"  Ballads 
and  Other 
Poems;'' 
1841. 

Cp.  "  Vic- 
torian 
Poets  "  : 
//•  158- 
160. 


The  poet's 
quality 
now  ap- 
parent. 


190 


HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW. 


Lyrical 
homilies. 


Sentiment. 


Pictur- 
tsqueness. 


contains    examples  of   all  the  classes   into  which   his 
poems   seem  to  divide   themselves,    and   may  be   ex- 
amined with  its  successors.     One  sees,  forthwith,  that 
Longfellow's  impulse  was  to  make   a  poem,  above  all, 
interesting.     He   was   no   word-monger,   no   winder   of 
coil  upon  coil  about  a  subtle  theme.     He  changed  his 
topics,  for  some   topic  he  must   have,  and   one   that 
suited  him.     A  cheerful  acceptance  of  the  lessons  of 
life  was  the  moral,  jsuggested   in   many  lyrics,  which 
commended   him    to  all   virtuous,   home-keeping   folk, 
but   in   the  end  poorly  served   him  with   the   critics. 
He  gained  a  foothold  by  his  least  poetic  work,  —  verse 
whose  easy  lessons  are  adjusted    to   common  needs; 
by  the  "Psalm  of  Life,"  "Excelsior,"  "Prometheus," 
and  "The  Ladder  of  St.  Augustine," —little  sermons 
in  rhyme  that  are  sure  to  catch  the  ear  and  to  be- 
come   hackneyed    as    a    sidewalk    song.      He    often 
taught,  by  choice,  the  primary  class,  and   the  upper 
form  is  slow  to  forget  it.     Next  above   these   pretty 
homilies    are    his    poems   of    sentiment   and   twilight 
brooding.     "The   Reaper  and   the    Flowers,"   "Foot- 
steps of  Angels,"  "  Maidenhood,"  "  Resignation,"  and 
"  Haunted  Houses  "  came  home  to  pensive  and  gen- 
tle natures.     Lowell  has  written  a  few  kindred  pieces, 
such  as   "The  Changeling"   and    "The    First   Snow- 
fall."    A   still   higher  class,    testing   Longfellow's  eye 
for   the    suggestive  side   of   a  theme    and   his    art    to 
make  the  most    of   it,  includes    "The    Fire   of   Drift- 
Wood,"    "The  Lighthouse,"    "Sand   of   the   Desert," 
"The    Jewish    Cemetery,"   and    "The    Arsenal."     In 
poems  of  this  sort  he  was  a  skilled  designer,  yet  they 
were  something  more  than  art  for  art's  sake.     Owing 
to  the  tenderness  seldom   absent   from    his  work,    he 
often  has  been  called  a  poet   of   the    Affections.     It 
must  be  owned  that  he  was  a  poet  of  the  Tastes  as 


QUALITY  OF  HIS  GENIUS. 


191 


well.  He  combined  beauty  with  feeling  in  lyrical 
trifles  which  rival  those  of  Tennyson  and  other  mas- 
ters of  technique,  and  was  almost  our  earliest  maker 
of  verse  that  might  be  termed  exquisite.  "  The  Bells 
of  Lynn"  and  "The  Tide  Rises,  the  Tide  Falls," 
show  that  the  hand  which  polished  "Curfew"  and 
"The  Arrow  and  the  Song"  was  sensitive  to  the 
last. 

Among  obvious  tests  of  a  poet  are  his  voice,  facil- 
ity, and  general  aim.  Longfellow's  verse  was  refined 
and  pleasing;  his  purpose,  evidently  not  that  of  a 
doctrinaire.  The  anti-slavery  poems  did  not  come, 
like  Whittier's,  from  a  fiery  heart,  or  rival  Lowell's  in 
humor  and  disdain.  They  simply  manifest  his  recog- 
nition and  artistic  treatment  of  an  existing  evil.  The 
ballad  of  "The  Quadroon  Girl"  is  a  poem,  not  a 
prophecy,  with  a  pathos  beautified  by  certain  "values," 
as  a  painter  might  term  them,  —  the  tropic  shore,  the 
lagoon,  the  island  planter's  daughter  and  slave.  Of 
the  higher  tests  of  poetic  genius,  —  spontaneity,  sweep, 
intellect,  imaginative  power,  —  what  examples  has  he 
left  us  ?  At  times  the  highest  of  all,  imagination,  in 
passages  where  he  foregoes  the  conceits  and  fancies 
that  so  possessed  him.  We  have  it  in  the  "  Midnight 
Mass";  in  "Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert";  in  "The  Span- 
ish Jew's  Tale,"  when 

"  straight  into  the  city  of  the  Lord 

The  Rabbi  leaped  with  the  Death-Angel's  sword, 
And  through  the  streets  there  swept  a  sudden  breath 
Of  something  there  unknown,  which  men  call  death." 

At  times  also  we  have  what  is  of  almost  equal  worth, 
imaginative  treatment.  This  is  felt  in  the  effect  of 
his  very  best  lyrics,  a  series  of  ballads,  with  "  The 
Skeleton  in  Armor  "  at  their  front  both  in  date  and  in 
merit.     This  vigorous  poem  opens  with  a  rare  abrupt- 1 


Taste. 


Not  a 

polemic 

reformer. 


Tests  0/ 
genius. 


Imagin- 
ative 
Ballads. 
"  The 
Skeleton 
in.  Ar- 
mor." etc. 


192 


HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW. 


Occasional 
Poems. 


ness.  The  author,  full  of  the  Norseland,  was  inspirited 
by  his  novel  theme,  and  threw  off  a  ringing  carol  of 
the  sea-rover's  training,  love,  adventure.  The  ca- 
dences and  imagery  belong  together,  and  the  meas- 
ure, that  of  Drayton's  "  Agincourt,"  is  better  than  any 
new  one  for  its  purpose.  Even  the  poet's  conceits  are 
braver  than  their  wont :  — 

"  Then  from  those  cavernous  eyes 
Pale  flashes  seemed  to  rise, 
As  when  the  northern  skies 

Gleam  in  December ; 
And,  like  the  water's  flow 
Under  December's  snow, 
Came  a  dull  voice  of  woe 

From  the  heart's  chamber." 

Elsewhere  he  is  as  resonant  as  the  bard  of  England's 
"  King  Harry  "  :  — 

"  And  as  to  catch  the  gale 
Round  veered  the  flapping  sail, 
Death  !  was  the  helmsman's  hail, 

Death  without  quarter ! 
Midships  with  iron  keel 
Struck  we  her  ribs  of  steel ; 
Down  her  black  hulk  did  reel 

Through  the  black  water  !  " 

To  old-fashioned  people  this  heroic  ballad,  written 
over  forty  years  ago,  is  worth  a  year's  product  of  what 
I  may  term  Kensington-stitch  verse.  A  few  others, 
mostly  of  the  sea,  count  high  in  any  estimate  of  Long- 
fellow. "The  Wreck  of  the  Hesperus,"  though  not 
without  blemishes,  "  Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert,"  "  Victor 
Galbraith,"  and  "The  Cumberland"  are  treated,  I 
think,  imaginatively.  Boker's  noble  stanzas  on  the 
sinking  of  the  Cumberland  follow  more  closely  the  old 
ballad  style,  but  Longfellow  plainly  found  a  style  of 
his  own.      His  "occasional"  poems  were  equally  fe« 


ARTISTIC  GRACE. 


193 


licitous  :  witness  the  touching,  sympathetic  imagery  of 
"  The  Two  Angels,"  the  joyous  grace  of  the  chanson 
for  Agassiz's  birthday.  "  Hawthorne,"  "  Bayard  Tay- 
lor," and  "  Killed  at  the  Ford  "  are  examples  of  the 
fitness  with  which  his  emotion  and  poetic  quality  cor- 
responded, each  to  each.  But  neither  war  nor  grief 
ever  too  much  disturbed  the  artist  soul.  Tragedy 
went  no  deeper  with  him  than  its  pathos  j  it  was  an- 
other element  of  the  beautiful.  Death  was  a  luminous 
transition.  "  The  Warden  of  the  Cinque  Ports  "  is  all 
melody  and  association.  He  made  a  scenic  threnody, 
knowing  the  laureate  would  supply  an  intellectual 
characterization  of  the  Iron  Duke.  His  fancy  dwells 
upon  the  ancient  and  high-sounding  title,  the  mist  and 
sunrise  of  the  Channel,  and  the  rolling  salute  from  all 
those  rampart  guns,  that  yet  could  not  arouse  the  old 
Field-Marshal  from  his  slumber.  Tennyson  fills  his 
grander  strophes  with  the  sturdy  valor  and  wisdom  of 
the  last  great  Englishman,  i>ut  within  our  own  poet's 
bounds  the  result  is  just  as  undeniably  a  poem. 

Longfellow,  employing  regular  forms  of  verse,  was 
flexible  where  many  are  awkward,  —  at  ease  in  his  fine 
clothes.  "  Rain  in  Summer,"  "  To  a  Child,"  and  a 
few  longer  poems  yet  to  be  examined,  such  as  "  The 
Building  of  the  Ship,"  are  written  with  a  free  hand. 
In  his  latter  period  he  often  used  an  anapestic  move- 
ment, first  discoverable  in  "  The  Saga  of  King  Olaf  " 
and  "Enceladus,"  afterward  in  "  Belisarius,"  "The 
Chamber  over  the  Gate,"  and  "  Helen  of  Tyre."  The 
impression  conveyed  is  that  we  listen  to  one  whose 
day  for  elaborate  song  is  past,  but  whose  voice  still 
warbles  in  the  fresh  break  of  spring  or  the  melting 
twilight  of  thankfulness  and  rest.  With  age,  his  nat- 
ural tenderness  grew  upon  him,  as  men's  traits  will  for 
good  and  bad.  "  The  Children's  Hour  "  is  one  of  the 
13 


A  metri- 
cal expert* 


i94 


HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW. 


"My  Lost 
Youth." 


inimitable  fireside  songs  that  made  this  "  old  mous- 
tache" the  children's  poet.  Another  delightful  lyric, 
"  My  Lost  IJouth,"  was  the  utterance  of  a  man  who 
in  middle  age  looked  in  his  own  heart  to  write,  and 
found  it  warm  and  true.  To  comprehend  its  charm 
and  sincerity,  one,  perchance,  must  also  have  loitered 
in  youth  along  the  piers,  sending  his  hopes  far  across 
the  whispering  ocean  to  the  untried  world ;  must  him- 
self remember 

"  the  black  wharves  and  the  slips, 

And  the  sea-tides  tossing  free ; 
And  Spanish  sailors  with  bearded  lips, 
And  the  beauty  and  mystery  of  the  ships, 

And  the  magic  of  the  sea." 

Some  breezy  dome  of  trees,  with  sounds  and  shadows 
like  those  of  Deering's  woods,  must  still  haunt  his 
memory,  if  he  would  recall 

"The  song  and  the  silence  in  the  heart, 
That  in  part  are  prophecies,  and  in  part 
Are  longings  wild  and  vain ; 
And  the  voice  of  that  fitful  song 
Sings  on,  and  is  never  still : 
*  A  boy's  will  is  the  wind's  will, 
And  the  thoughts  of  youth  are  long,  long  thoughts.' " 

Of  all  these  poems,  the  swallow-flights  of  many  sea- 
sons, not  one  falls  short  of  a  certain  standard  of  grace 
and  correctness ;  and  the  same  may  be  said  of  the 
author's  more  pretentious  works,  to  which  we  now 
come.  Meanwhile  it  is  to  be  noted  that  he  was  the 
first  American  to  compose  sustained  narrative-poems 
that  gained  and  kept  a  place  in  literature.  In  fact, 
since  the  Georgian  period,  there  has  been  no  other 
poet  of  our  tongue,  save  Tennyson,  whose  longer  pro- 
ductions have  been  greeted  by  the  public  with  the 
interest  bestowed  upon  the  successive  works  of  nov- 
elists in  the  front  rank. 


'EVANGELINE: 


195 


IV. 

"  Evangeline,"  the  first  of  these  tales  in  verse, 
was  written  —  as  I  have  said  of  "  In  Memoriam," 
that  very  different  production  —  when  its  author  had 
reached  the  age  of  forty,  with  his  powers  in  full  matu- 
rity, and  it  remains  his  typical  poem.  Like  "  Hermann 
and  Dorothea,"  it  is  composed  in  hexameter,  as  befits 
a  bucolic  love  story.  Longfellow's  choice  of  this  meas- 
ure, in  defiance  of  a  noble  army  of  censors,  proves 
that  he  had,  much  as  he  shrank  from  discussion,  the 
full  courage  of  his  convictions  upon  a  point  in  literary 
art./  He  lived  for  poetry ;  his  tastes  were  definite,  and 
he  felt  himself  justified  in  respecting  them,  j 

Within  a  recent  period  several  noteworthy  exten- 
sions have  been  made  to  the  technical  range  of  Eng- 
lish verse.  Among  these  are  :  the  use  by  Tennyson  of 
the  stanzaic  form  of  "  In  Memoriam "  ;  the  example 
of  a  long  poem  in  unrhymed  trochaics,  by  Longfellow ; 
Swinburne's  forcible  handling  of  anapestic  measures; 
more  recently,  the  revival  of  elegant  romance  forms, 
by  the  new  English  school.  Preceding  these  in  date 
we  have  Longfellow's  success  in  familiarizing  the 
"  English  hexameter,"  the  measure  of  "  Evangeline  " 
and  "  Miles  Standish."  The  popularity  of  those  idyls 
assuredly  proved  that  the  common  folk,  in  spite  of 
critics,  do  not  find  the  verse  a  stumbling-block.  They 
read  it,  when  gracefully  written,  without  suspecting  that 
it  is  not  a  musical  and  natural  English  form.  The 
question  of  hexameter  has  been  argued  to  little  pur- 
pose, in  consequence  of  a  mist  which  has  hid  the  true 
issue  from  the  perception  of  both  parties  to  the  dis- 
pute. The  verse  usually  is  examined,  by  its  friends 
and  opponents,  from  the  scholar's  point  of  view. 
To  Mr.  Swinburne,  hexameters  are  "  ugly  bastards  of 


Sustained 
narrative 
poems. 


"  Evange- 
line" 
1847. 


The  ques- 
tion of 
11  English 
Hexatne- 
ter" 
verse. 
Cp.  "  Vic- 
torian 
Poets  "  : 
/.  2S 1. 


Wrongjy 
argued, 
from  the 
scholar's 
Point  of 


196 


HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW. 


Kingsley's 
"■Andro- 
meda." 


A  wrong 
fremise. 


verse  " ;  even  those  of  Mr.  Arnold  have  "  no  metrical 
feet  at  all,"  but  sound  like  "  anapests  broken  up  and 
driven  wrong "  ;  Clough's  are  admirable  "  studies  in 
graduated  prose  "  ;  Hawtrey's  "  faultless,  English,  hex- 
ametrical,"  but  only  "  a  well-played  stroke,"  not  con- 
tinuable ;  Kingsley's  "  Andromeda,"  the  "  one  good 
poem  extant  in  that  pernicious  metre,"  and  even 
Kingsley's  feet  are  but  "loose,  rhymeless  anapests." 
Now  "  Andromeda,"  a  delicious  poem  for  poets,  never 
will  commend  its  measure  to  the  multitude,  since  it 
never  will  reach  them.     But  if  such  lines  as  these,  — 

"  Far  through  the  wine-dark  depths  of  the  crystal,  the   gardens 
of  Nereus, 
Coral  and  sea-fan  and    tangle,  the  blooms  and  the  palms  of 
the  ocean," 

are  essentially  anapestic,  it  is  because  one  chooses  to 
read  them  so  ;  and  any  dactylic  verse  of  Homer  may 
be  transposed  in  the  same  way  by  reading  it  accentu- 
ally and  ignoring  the  first  and  last  syllables.  When 
Mr.  Swinburne  adds,  "  Such  as  pass  elsewhere  for 
English  hexameter,  I  do  hope,  are  impossible  to  Eton," 
he  strikes  the  key-note  of  the  misunderstanding.  The 
same  premise  is  always  implied,  to  wit :  that  classical 
analogies  should  govern  our  opinion  of  this  measure. 
Unfortunately,  I  say,  even  the  arguments  of  its  de- 
fenders are  based  on  the  notion  that  the  modern 
verse  may  approximate  to  the  antique,  in  which  effort, 
of  course,  it  always  must  fail.  Poe,  in  his  turn,  op- 
posed Longfellow's  hexameters  because  they  were  not 
classical ;  yet  he  unconsciously  paid  tribute  to  them  as 
an  English  form  of  verse,  when  he  said  that  their  ad- 
mirers were  "  deceived  by  the  facility  with  which  some 
of  these  verses  may  be  read  ! "  Lord  Derby  antici- 
pated Mr.  Swinburne's  "pernicious  metre,"  iri  denounc- 


'ENGLISH  HEXAMETER'    VERSE. 


197 


ing  "  that  pestilent  heresy  of  the  so-called  English 
hexameter,"  which  "  can  only  be  pressed  into  the  ser- 
vice by  a  violation  of  every  rule  of  prosody."  Whether 
or  not  the  noble  translator,  deprived  of  rules  of  pros- 
ody, would  have  found  it  hard  to  write  verse  at  all, 
it  is  plain  that  here  again  crops  out  the  fallacy  of  the 
discussion.  Fixed  rules  of  quantitative  or  classical 
verse  must  be  put  out  of  mind.  The  question  ought 
'to  be,  simply :  Is  the  verse,  in  six  feet,  of  "  Evange- 
line "  or  "  Andromeda  "  a  good  and  readable  meas- 
ure for  an  English  poem  ?  — — 

Bryant,  a  good  writer  of  blank  verse,  disliked  a 
measure  which  he  found  unsuited  to  his  slow  and  dig- 
nified movement.  Professor  Lewis  took  the  ground  of 
Mr.  Bryant,  whose  Homer  he  so  much  praised.  Mr. 
Lang  is  on  the  same  side,  and  has  said  that  not  even 
Professor  Arnold  can  alter  his  opinion.  Yet  the  late 
Professor  Hadley,  an  almost  matchless  scholar,  advo- 
cated this  verse  for  Homeric  translation.  Messrs. 
Lowell,  Higginson,  and  Stoddard  are  among  its  friends. 
Matthew  Arnold,  in  the  delightful  papers  "  On  Trans- 
lating Homer,"  has  made  his  strongest  plea  for  the 
English  hexameter  by  unconsciously  granting  that  its 
close  approximation  to  the  antique  type  must  be  the 
result  of  adroit  labor,  not  of  unstudied  expression. 
Such  a  result  justly  might  be  deemed  an  artifice,  dis- 
tinct from  natural  English  verse.  And  Mr.  Arnold, 
in  view  of  the  reception  awarded  "  Evangeline,"  also 
sees  that  the  dislike  of  our  present  English  hexameter 
is  "rather  among  the  professional  critics  than  the 
general  public."  A  liking  for  it,  on  the  part  of  many 
poets,  is  evident  from  their  successive  experiments. 
Longfellow's  foreign  studies  influenced  his  own  deci- 
sion in  its  favor  j  since  then  we  have  had  Kingsley's 
"  Andromeda,"  Clough's  "Bothie,"  Howells's  "Clem-i 


The  real 
Point  at 
issue. 


Views  of 
other 
friends 
and  oppo- 
nents. 


Arnold 
"On 
Trans- 
lating' 
Homer." 


Recent 
poems  in 
hexame- 
Ur. 


198 


HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW. 


Accent 
and  quan- 
tity. 


Ultimate 
character- 
istics. 
Cp.  "  Vic- 
torian 
Poets  "  ; 
p.  251. 


ent,"  Taylor's  rhythmic  "  Pastorals,"  and,  more  re- 
cently, Mr.  Munby's  idyl  of  "  Dorothy  "  in  the  elegaic 
measure,  and  its  Hellenic  counter-type,  the  "  Delphic 
Days  "  of  Mr.  Snider.  But  while  there  are  both  faith 
and  practice  in  favor  of  the  hexametric  verse,  it  is  still 
in  a  stage  of  growth.  Mr.  Arnold  a  second  time  reaches 
the  mark  when  he  implies  that  its  capabilities  are  not 
yet  evident  j  that,  "  even  now,  if  a  version  of  the  Iliad 
in  English  hexameter  were  made  by  a  poet  who,  like 
Mr.  Longfellow,  has  that  indefinable  quality  which 
renders  him  popular,  — something  attractive  in  his  tal- 
ent which  communicates  itself  to  his  verses,  —  it  would 
have  a  great  success  among  the  general  public."  He 
expected  yet  to  see  an  improved  type  of  this  verse, 
which  should  excel  Voss's  by  as  much  as  Shakespeare's 
blank  verse  excels  that  of  Schiller.  This  may  or  may 
but  the  capabilities  of  the  measure  will  not 
be  understood  until  some  fine  poet  —  combining  the 
simplicity  of  Longfellow  and  the  vigor  of  Clough,  and 
free  from  the  sing-song  of  the  one  and  the  roughness 
of  the  other  —  shall  make  it  the  vehicle  of  passion, 
incident,  imagination.  -"To  bring  out  its  full  rhythm, 
while  depending  chiefly  on  accent,  —  the  natural  basis 
of  English  verse,  —  the  ear  will  pay  regard  to  such 
effects  of  quantity  as  the  language  proffers.  Purely 
quantitative  English  verse,  at  any  length,  is  out  of  the 
equation.  To  the  samples  of  it  often  printed  by  ama- 
teurs in  "  Blackwood  "  and  elsewhere,  Canning's  out- 
burst, "  Dactylics  call'st  thou  them  ?  God  help  thee, 
silly  one ! "  may  be  justly  applied,  but  not  to  the  hex- 
ameter of  Kingsley  and  Bayard  Taylor.  Call  the  new 
measure  what  you  will  —  something  else,  if  possible, 
than  the  term  applied  to  the  verse  of  Homer  and  Lu- 
cretius, for  it  assuredly  is  not  composed  of  quantita- 
tive dactyls  and  spondees.     But  it  will  have  six  feet, 


A    POPULAR   TEST  AND    VERDICT. 


199 


and  natural  breaks  and  caesuras,  and  will  be  more  or 
less  dactylic;   it  may  also   have  anapestic   variations, 
and  trochees  quite  as  often  as  spondees.  /To  sum  up 
all,  its  music,  sweep,  and  inspiriting  effect  will  depend 
entirely  upon  the  genius  of  the  poet  who  writes  it.  — 
The  use  of   this   measure  for  translation  from  the 
Greek  and  Latin  poets  I  have  discussed  in  the  chap- 
ter on  Bryant.     Longfellow  could  not  be  the  supreme 
translator  of  Homer ;  but  if  there  was  nothing  of  the 
Grecian  in  him,  there  was  much  of  the  Latinist,  and 
with  Virgil's  polished  muse  he  might  have  been  quite 
at  ease.     Meanwhile,  the  popularity  of  our  new  hex- 
ameter with   simple   readers   who   know  little   of  the 
Homeric  roll,  the  Sicilian  psithurisma,  or  Virgil's  liq- 
uid flow,  has  been  demonstrated  against  all  theorists 
by  the  record  of   "Evangeline."     The   poet's   friends 
told  him  he  must  take  a  familiar  metre,  that  hexame- 
ters  "would   never  do."     He   found,  as   reported   by 
David  Macrae,  that  his  "thoughts  would  run  in  hex- 
ameter," and  declared  that  the  measure  would  "take 
root   in   English  soil."     "It   is   a   measure,"  he  said, 
"  that  suits  all  themes.     It  can  fly  low  like  a  swallow, 
and  at  any  moment  dart   skyward.    .    .    .    What  fine 
hexameters  we  have  in  the  Bible :  Husbands,  love  your 
wives,  and  be  not  bitter  against  them;   and   this   line, 
God  is  gone  up  with  a  shout,  the  Lord  with  the  sound 
of  a  trumpet.     Nothing  could  be  grander  than  that!" 
Over-dactylic,  and   therefore  monotonous,  as  Longfel- 
low's  hexameters   often    are,  they  have   the   merit   of 
being  smooth  to  read,  without  analysis,  like  any  other 
English  verse.     This  primary,  easy  lilt  was  needed  for 
an  introduction,  until,  stage  by  stage,  the  popular  ear 
should    be   wonted    to    more   varied    forms,    and    the 
scholar  brought   to   realize   that   here   is   a  true   and 
idiomatic   English   verse,   however   distinct   from   that 
which  he  learned  in  the  classes. 


See  pp.  89- 
91. 


Popular 
success  of 
Longfel- 
low's ex- 
periment. 


200 


HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW. 


"  Evan- 
geline " 
the  flower 
of  Ameri- 
can idyls. 


Notwithstanding  its  primitive  and  loose  construc- 
tion, the  verse  of  "  Evangeline "  is  at  times  vigorously 
wrought  and  sonorous  :  — 

"  Wild  through  the  dark  colonnades  and  corridors  leafy  the  blast 
rang, 
Breaking  the  seal  of  silence,  and  giving  tongues  to  the  forest. 
Soundless  above  them  the  banners  of  moss  just  stirred  to  the 

music. 
Multitudinous  echoes  awoke  and  died  in  the  distance, 
Over  the  watery  floor,  and  beneath  the  reverberant  branches.'' 

And  with   the   measure   that   came   to   him,  the  poet 
had   chanced   upon  an   idyllic   story,  seemingly  made 
for  its  use,  and  wholly  after  his  liking.     A  beautiful, 
pathetic  tradition  of  American  history,  remote  enough 
to  gather  a  poetic  halo,  and  yet  fresh  with  sweet  hu- 
manities; tinged  with  provincial  color  which  he  knew 
and  loved,  and  in  its  course  taking  on  the  changing 
atmospheres  of  his  own  land;   pastoral   at  first,  then 
broken  into  action,  and  afterward  the  record  of  shift- 
ing scenes  that  made   life   a   pilgrimage   and   dream. 
There  are   few  dramatic  episodes;   there   is   but   one 
figure  whom  we  follow,  —  that  one  the  most  touching 
of    all,    the   betrothed    Evangeline   searching   for   her 
lover,  through  weary  years  and  over  half  an  unknown 
world.     There  are  chance  pictures  of  Acadian  fields, 
New  World  rivers,  prairies,  bayous,  forests,  by  moon- 
light and  starlight  and  midday;  glimpses,  too,  of  pic- 
turesque figures,  artisans  and  farmers,  soldiery,   trap- 
pers, boatmen,  emigrants  and  priests.     But  the  poem 
already  is  a  little  classic,  and  will  remain  one,  just  as 
surely  as  "The  Vicar  of  Wakefield,"   "The  Deserted 
Village,"  or  any  other  sweet   and   pious    idyl    of   our 
English    tongue;    yet   we    find    its    counterpart    more 
nearly,    I  think,    in    some   faultless   miniature   of    the 
purest  French  school.     Evangeline,  as  she 


'Hiawatha: 


201 


"  Sat  by  some  lonely  grave,  and  thought  that  perchance  in  its 
bosom 
He  was  already  at  rest,  and  she  longed  to  slumber  beside  him," 

though  the  subject  of  artists,  needs  no  other  painter 
than  her  poet,  through  whose  verse  the  music  of  her 
name  and  the  legend  of  her  wanderings  will  be  long 
perpetuated.  There  are  flaws  and  petty  fancies  and 
homely  passages  in  "  Evangeline  " ;  but  this  one  poem, 
thus  far  the  flower  of  American  idyls,  known  in  all 
lands,  I  will  not  approach  in  a  critical  spirit.  There  ^ 
are  rooms  in  every  house  where  one  treads  with  soft- 
ened footfall.<«s&.ccept  it  as  the  poet  left  it,  the  mark 
of  our  advance  at  that  time  in  the  art  of  song,  —  his 
own  favorite,  of  which  he  justly  might  be  fond,  since 
his  people  loved  it  with  him,  and  him  always  for  its 
sake. 

The  advantage  of  a  new  field,  to  which  later  au- 
thors, like  Harte  and  Cable,  are  somewhat  indebted, 
was  of  full  service  to  our  poet,  not  only  on  his  pro- 
vincial excursions,  but  also  in  the  one  successful  at- 
tempt that  has  been  made  to  treat  in  numbers  the 
customs  and  legends  of  our  Indian  tribes.  This  gain 
was  strengthened  by  the  novelty  of  the  rhymeless  tro- 
chaic dimeter  used  for  Hiawatha,  a  measure  then 
practically  unknown  to  English  verse.  He  probably 
would  not  have  ventured  to  compose  his  Algic  Edda 
in  this  monotonous  time-beat,  had  he  not  made  sure 
of  its  effect  in  older  literatures,  and  mainly,  as  was 
noted  at  the  time,  in  the  Finnish  epic  of  "  Kalevala." 
The  result,  on  the  whole,  justified  his  course.  "  Hia- 
watha "  is  a  forest-poem ;  it  is  fragrant  with  the  woods, 
fresh  with  the  sky  and  waters  of  the  breezy  north. 
The  Indian  traditions,  like  those  of  Finland,  are  the 
myths  of  an  untutored  race ;  they  would  seem  puerile 
and  affected  in  any  but  the  most  primitive  of  chant- 


"Tke 
Song  of 
Hianva- 
tha^  1855. 


list, 
ure. 


202 


HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW. 


First  suc- 
cessful 
treatment 
of  the  In- 
dian le- 
gends. 


ing  measures.  As  it  is,  one  feels  that  the  nicest  skill 
was  required  to  protect  the  verse  from  gathering  an 
effect  of  burlesque  or  commonplace ;  yet  this  it  never 
does.  The  fable  is  not  of  a  stimulating  kind.  Grown- 
up readers,  I  suspect,  seldom  go  through  it  consecu- 
tively. To  read  here  and  there  and  at  odd  times,  it 
is  in  every  way  pleasurable.  It  was,  in  a  sense,  the 
poet's  most  genuine  addition  to  our  native  literature. 
Previous  endeavors  to  make  imaginative  verse  from 
aboriginal  material  had  signally  failed :  witness  the 
ludicrous  heroics  of  the  Knickerbocker  poets,  whose 
conventional  ideals  were  utterly  discarded  by  Long- 
fellow. He  alone  had  the  gift  to  blend  the  kindred 
myths  of  Indian  fancy  in  mellow  and  artistic  simplic- 
ity ;  to  cull  from  Schoolcraft  what  was  really  essential, 
and  make  it  more  charming  for  us  than  a  sheer  in- 
vention possibly  could  be.  He  made  the  field  his 
own,  with  little  room  for  after-comers.  "  Hiawatha " 
is  the  one  poem  that  beguiles  the  reader  to  see  the 
birch  and  ash,  the  heron  and  eagle  and  deer,  as  they 
seem  to  the  red  man  himself,  and  to  join  for  the  mo- 
ment in  his  simple  creed  and  wonderment.  Such  is 
the  half-dramatic  merit  of  the  work,  and  it  was  only 
by  a  true  exercise  of  the  imagination  that  a  poet, 
himself  no  familiar  of  the  wild-wood  life,  could  sit  in 
his  study  and  utilize  the  books  relating  to  it  :  an 
equally  true  exercise,  I  think,  though  upon  a  less  ma- 
jestic basis,  with  that  of  the  poet  who  mastered  the 
Arthurian  legends  of  his  own  historic  race  and  island, 
and  wrote  the  "Idylls  of  the  King." /Longfellow's 
use  of  the  Indian  dialect  and  names  is  delightful.  / 
These  cantos  remind  us  that  poetry  is  the  natural 
speech  of  primitive  races;  the  "song"  of  Hiawatha 
has  the  epic  quality  that  pertains  to  early  ballads, 
the  highest  enjoyment  of  which  belongs  to  later  ages 


1  COURTSHIP   OF  MILES  STANDISII 


203 


and  to  the  creature  that  Whitman  terms  the  civilizee. 
He  alone  can  relish  to  the  full  the  illusions  which 
the  poet  has  recaptured  for  his  episode  of  "  The 
Building  of  the  Canoe,"  the  death  of  Minnehaha,  and 
Hiawatha's  mystical  farewell. 

When  a  companion-piece  to  "  Evangeline  "  appeared, 
every  one  made  haste  to  acquaint  himself  with  the 
love  experience  of  the  demure  Priscilla,  loyal  John 
Alden,  and  bluff  Captain  Miles.  Even  now,  if  we 
had  some  young  Tennysons  and  Longfellows,  poetic 
ideals  might  not  wholly  give  way  to  the  novelist's  pho- 
tographs of  every-day  life.  The  author's  tact  guided 
him  to  the  prettiest  tradition  of  Pilgrim  times.  We 
have  a  romantic  picture  of  the  Plymouth  settlement, 
with  its  far-away  round  of  human  life  and  action, 
through  which  the  tide  of  love  went  flowing  then  as 
now.  The  bucolic  wedding-scene  at  the  close  is  a 
fine  subject  for  the  pastoral  canvas.  The  Courtship 
of  Miles  Standish  was  an  advance  upon  "  Evangeline," 
so  far  as  concerns  structure  and  the  distinct  charac- 
terization of  personages.  A  merit  of  the  tale  is  the 
frolicsome  humor  here  and  there,  lighting  up  the  gloom 
that  blends  with  our  conception  of  the  Pilgrim  inclos- 
ure,  and  we  see  that  comic  and  poetic  elements  are 
not  at  odds  in  the  scheme  of  a  bright  imagination. 
The  verse,  though  stronger,  is  more  labored  than  that 
of  "  Evangeline  "  ;  some  of  the  lines  are  prosaic,  al- 
most inadmissible.  There  are  worse,  however,  in  the 
poet's  last  example  of  hexameter,  the  Quaker  story  of 
"Elizabeth,"  —  which  was  written  rather  to  fill  out  the 
"  Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn  "  than  from  any  special  in- 
spiration. Nor  does  the  Plymouth  idyl  show  much 
sympathy  on  the  part  of  the  author  with  the  ancestral 
environment,  but  chiefly  a  cavalier  perception  of  what 
romance  and  grace  there  might  have  been  in  the  good 
rM  colony  time. 


204 


HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW. 


Longfel- 
loiu^s  dra- 
matic 
poems. 


"The 
Spanish 
Student? 
1843. 


Various 
weak 
andfaulty 
dramas. 


Cfi.  "  Vic- 
torian 
Poets  " : 
fp.  189, 
*90>  4i3  5 


His  works  in  dramatic   form   plainly  represent    the 
craving   of   a  versatile   poet   to  win   laurels   in    every 
province  of  his  art.     But  to  compose  a  living  drama 
requires  just  that   special  faculty,  if   not  the  highest, 
which  is   denied  to  nine  out  of  ten.     Longfellow,  per- 
chance, might  have  made   himself   either  a  dramatist 
or  a  novelist,  if   he   had   gone    into  training   as  dog- 
gedly   as    others,   born    essayists    or   poets,  who   have 
gained   the    secret   of   novel-writing   through  practice, 
aided   by  popular  encouragement.      He   made   a   fair 
beginning  as  a  romancer  with  "Hyperion,"  and  even 
as  a  dramatist  by  the  clever  play  of  The  Spanish  Stu- 
jenty  —  equipped  with  the  properties  of  a  country  and 
literature   so  well   understood   by  him.     As  a  drama, 
that  remains  his  best  achievement.     When  the  desire 
to  better  it  possessed  him,  the  outcome  was  a  motley 
series  of   writings   in    the   form  under  review:    one,  a 
frigid  contribution  to  the  pseudo-antique  verse  at  which 
all  college-bred  poets  feel  competent  to  try  their  hands. 
Nothing  with  the  true  Grecian  flavor  could  come  out 
of   his    Italian  and   Gothic   tendencies.     Pandora,  be- 
sides reminding  us  of  Taylor's  version  of  the  Second 
Part   of   Faust,  is   in  every  way  a  forced    effort,  and, 
like   "Judas  Maccabaeus,"  would  go  a-begging   if   the 
work  of   a  new  man.     The  Trilogy  of    Christus,  as  a 
whole,  is  a  disjointed  failure.     Parts  First  and  Third, 
"The  Divine  Tragedy,"  and  "The  New  England  Trag- 
edies," exhibit  the  skill    to  choose   imposing  subjects 
and   build    a   framework,  but   little   of   the   power  re- 
quired  for  their  treatment.     We   have   the   form,  the 
personages,  and  situations,  rarely  the  action  and  noble 
fire.     The   author's  shortcomings  are  even  more  con- 
spicuous than  Tennyson's,  and  by  as  much  as  his  in- 
tellectual  power  was   the   less   absolute.     His   theory 
that   the   Scriptural    language   should    be   reproduced 


4  THE  GOLDEN  LEGEND: 


205 


grew  out  of  the  fact  that  he  could  invent  no  other, 
and  resulted  in  a  barren  paraphrase  of  what  is  fine 
in  its  own  place.  What  sublime  themes !  —  the  life 
and  passion  of  Christ,  the  Golden  Legend  of  Chris- 
tendom, the  tragedy  of  Puritan  superstition,  —  and 
how  tamely  the  first  and  last  of  these  are  handled ! 
Their  consolidation  was  manifestly  an  after-thought, 
to  give  a  semblance  of  strength  to  the  whole.  Where 
we  have  the  poet's  own  style,  as  in  the  soliloquies  of 
Mary,  Simon,  Helen,  it  is  a  subjective  utterance  of 
the  Cambridge  scholar  at  his  desk.  The  Interludes 
are  put  in  to  brace  the  effect,  like  the  sham  but- 
tresses of  a  faulty  building.  He  should  not  have  pre- 
empted the  sable  field  of  the  Quaker  and  witch  per- 
secutions, unless  he  felt  in  his  utmost  fibre  the  nerve 
to  occupy  it.  The  temptation  was  strong ;  the  result, 
contrasted  with  Hawthorne's  prose  treatment  of  kin- 
dred subjects,  is  deplorable. 

The  Golden  Legend,  however,  should  be  judged  by 
itself,  and  is  an  enchanting  romance  of  the  Middle 
Age  cast  in  the  dramatic  mould.  Brought  out  years 
before  the  "Tragedies,"  it  finally  was  merged  in  the 
"  Christus  "  by  way  of  toning  up  the  whole,  the  poet 
well  knowing  that  this  was  his  choicest  distillation  of 
Gothic  mysticism  and  its  legendary.  It  is  composite 
rather  than  inventive ;  the  correspondences  between 
this  work  and  Goethe's  masterpiece,  not  to  speak  of 
productions  earlier  than  either,  are  interesting.  There 
is  decided  originality  in  its  general  effect,  and  in  the 
taste  wherewith  the  author,  like  a  modern  maker  of 
stained  glass,  arranged  the  prismatic  materials  which 
he  knew  precisely  where  to  collect.  The  Prologue,  not 
wholly  a  new  conception,  is  none  the  less  imaginative  : 
a  scene  of  night  and  storm,  with  Lucifer  and  the  Pow- 
ers of  the  Air  vainly  assaulting  the  Strasburg  Cross, 


and  see 
"  Becket " 
in  index 
to  this 
volume. 


"  The 
Golden 
Legend" 
1851. 


Delightful 
re-use  0/ 
Gothic 
material. 


206 


HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW. 


The  poet's 
freest  and 
most  af- 
fluent 
work. 


baffled  by  the  voices  of  the  Bells,  which  repeat  the  sa- 
cred words  graven  on  their  sides.  The  Legend  is  a 
striking  instance  of  an  effort  by  which  mediaeval  rituals, 
chants,  and  wonder-tales  are  boldly  seized  ''and  molten 
to  an  alloy,  whose  color  and  tensile  qualities  are  due  to 
the  solvent  of  the  alchemist.  Here  and  there  are  un* 
mistakable  lustres  of  the  poet's  own  vein.  This  would 
be  recognized  at  sight :  — 

u  His  gracious  presence  upon  earth 
Was  as  a  fire  upon  a  hearth  ; 
As  pleasant  songs,  at  morning  sung, 
The  words  that  dropped  from  his  sweet  tongue 
Strengthened  our  hearts." 

And  this,  also,  is  after  his  best  fashion  :  — 

"  I  have  my  trials.     Time  has  laid  his  hand 
Upon  my  heart,  gently,  not  smiting  it, 
But  as  a  harper  lays  his  open  palm 
Upon  his  harp,  to  deaden  its  vibrations." 

The  humor  of  Lucifer's  soliloquies,  in  the  Church 
and  elsewhere,  is  characteristic  of  both  Goethe  and 
Longfellow,  and  therefore  German  with  a  difference. 
But  all  phases  of  our  poet's  verse  and  fancy  are  to  be 
observed  in  this  brilliant  conglomerate.  And  what 
rare  materials  are  brought  together  !  Here  are  revived 
the  oft-told  gest  of  Brother  Felix,  Walter  the  Minne- 
singer, Lucifer  and  the  Black  Paternoster,  the  monk- 
ish chants  and  anthems,  the  Miracle  Play,  the  disputes 
at  the  School  of  Palermo.  The  richest  passages  are 
those  contrasting  the  Cellar  and  Refectory  scenes  with 
the  prayer-like  labor  of  Brother  Pacificus  illuminating 
the  Gospel  in  the  Scriptorium  above.  These,  with 
many  beautiful  counterparts,  lighting  page  after  page, 
move  one  to  accord  with  those  who  regard  "The 
Golden  Legend  "  as  a  piece  in  which  the  poet's  ver- 
satile genius  is  seen  at  its  best.     Though  not  the  work 


FREE-HAND  IDYLS. 


207 


of  a  natural  dramatist,  it  is  vastly  superior  to  the  pro- 
saic fabrics  which  are  attached  to  it,  and  which  fail  to 
grow  upon  the  reader  in  spite  of  this  forced  associa- 
tion. 

A  posthumous  drama,  Michael  Angelo,  while  having 
the  dignity  that  becomes  its  theme,  does  not  change 
our  view  of  the  author's  limitations.  It  contains  ele- 
vated passages,  mostly  the  soliloquies  of  the  great  art- 
ist, of  whom  in  his  old  age  it  may  be  termed  a  sympa- 
thetic study,  and  is  worth  pursuing,  even  for  something 
more  than  the  perfect  sonnet  which  forms  the  Dedica- 
tion. 

Were  I  to  select  one  from  the  poet's  long  succession 
of  books  to  fitly  illustrate  his  traits,  I  might  name  the 
little  volume  of  1849,  with  its  two  divisions,  "  By  the 
Seaside  "  and  "  By  the  Fireside."  The  Building  of  the 
Ship  is  the  best  example  of  his  free-hand  metrical 
style,  —  musical,  wholesome,  and  suggestive  of  an  im- 
agination that  takes  heat  from  its  own  action.  This 
celebration  of  a  manly  and  poetic  form  of  handicraft  is 
simply  cast,  yet  full  of  energy  and  spirit.  At  the  close, 
a  sunburst  of  patriotism,  the  superb  apostrophe  to  the 
Union,  outvies  that  ode  of  Horace  on  which  it  was 
modelled.  In  conception  and  structure  the  poem,  while 
thoroughly  national,  is  akin  to  Schiller's  "  Lay  of  the 
Bell."  I  think  that  the  minor  lyrics  in  this  volume, 
from  "Chrysaor"  to  "Gaspar  Becersa,"  warrant  my 
liking  for  it,  and  are  peculiarly  representative.  The 
author  long  afterward  supplied  companion-pieces,  The 
Hanging  of  the  Crane  and  Keramos,  to  his  idyl  of  the 
ship-yard.  His  reputation  now  made  the  production  of 
each  of  these  a  literary  event;  just  as  any  late  and 
brief  work  of  a  favorite  composer  sends  a  murmur  of 
interest  through  the  musical  world.  Such  afterpieces 
earn  for  artists,  in  the  ripeness  of  their  fame,  a  more 


208 


HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW. 


"  Tales 
of  a  IVay- 
side  Inn," 
1863-1874. 


Longfel- 
low and 
Morris. 
Cj>.  "  Vic- 
torian 
Poets": 
$P>  372- 
378. 


sudden    reward   than   greater   efforts   which    preceded 
them.     All  things  come  around  at  last,  and  often  come 
too  late.     But  Longfellow  again  and  again  received  his 
crown  of  praise ;  and  this  the  more  frequently  in  return 
for  service  in  which  he  was  easily  first,  —  the  art  which 
gained  for  an  old-time  minstrel  a  willing  largess,  that 
of  the  raconteur,  the  teller  of  bewitching  tales.     His 
station  as  a  poet  was  not  advanced  by  the  different  in- 
stalments of  the   Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn,  but  it  was 
much  to  have  the  delight  of  giving  delight,  as  often  as 
each  appeared,  to  a  host  of  unseen  readers.     And  so  in 
the  end  they  formed  his  most  extended  work  :  a  series 
of  short  stories,  mostly  gathered  from  older  literatures, 
translated  into  his  varying  and  crystalline  verse,  and 
linked  together,  like  the  tales  of  Boccaccio  and  Chau- 
cer, by  a  running  commentary  of  the  poet's  own.     The 
selections  are  good  of  themselves,  and  the  conceit  of 
the  gathering  of  ,the   poet's   friends  at   the   Sudbury 
Inn    brought   them    near  to  the    interest   of   his  audi- 
ence.    Nothing  could  be  better  than  the  prelude.     A 
transfiguring  portraiture  from  life  is  that  of  the  musi- 
cian, Ole   Bull.     The  tales  here   told  in  song  for  the 
first  time,  all  of   them  colonial,  are  but  four  in  num- 
ber,—few  indeed,  among  so  many  gleaned   from  the 
Decameron,  the  Gesta  Romanorum,  "the  chronicles  of 
Charlemagne,"  and  "the  stories  that  recorded  are  by 
Pierre  Alphonse,"     Here  is  the  semblance  of   a  mas- 
ter effort,  but  in  fact  a  succession  of  minor  ones;  we 
perceive  that  no  great  outlay  of  imaginative  force  was 
required   for   this    kind    of   work.     With   Longfellow's 
lyrical   facility  of   putting  a  story  into  rippling  verse, 
almost   as    lightly  *as    another  would   tell   it   in  prose, 
we   find   ourselves  assured   of   as  many  poems  as   he 
had  themes.     Less  subtle  and  refined  than  Morris,  he 
was  a  better  raconteur.     This  was  due   to  a  modern 


'DANTE'S  DIVINE   COMEDY: 


209 


and  natural  style,  the  sweet  variety  of  his  measures, 
and  to  his  ease  in  dialogue.  He  intersperses  many 
realistic  passages,  and  by  other  ways  avoids  the  mo- 
notony of  the  "  idle  singer  of  an  empty  day."  As  for 
poetic  atmosphere  and  all  the  essentials  of  a  select 
work  of  beauty,  the  "  Tales "  cannot  enter  into  com- 
parison with  "The  Earthly  Paradise."  Longfellow's 
frequent  gayety  and  constant  sense  of  the  humani- 
ties make  him  a  true  story-teller  for  the  multitude; 
not,  like  Morris,  an  exquisite,  dreamy  singer  for  com- 
panions of  his  own  guild. 

His  version  of  The  Divine  Comedy  is  one  of  the 
most  signal  results  of  American  labor  in  the  depart- 
ment of  translation.  There  was  nothing  in  the  work 
of  his  predecessors  to  prevent  the  task  from  being 
not  only  a  matter  of  attraction,  but  a  duty;  no  one, 
on  the  score  of  talent  or  acquirements,  was  better 
fitted  to  renew  an  attempt  which  from  its  conditions 
never  can  be  perfectly  successful.  His  life-long  study 
of  Dante's  text  had  brought  to  this  natural  translator 
that  knowledge  of  it  which  was  more  than  half  the 
achievement.  The  theory  of  his  version  was  the  mod- 
ern one  (which  it  helped  to  confirm),  —  that  of  re- 
cent and  noted  English  translations,  and  of  Taylor's 
"Faust,"  —  to  wit,  a  literal  and  lineal  rendering.  Un- 
like Taylor,  Longfellow  had  but  one  measure  to  re- 
produce, and  he  discarded  the  rhymes  altogether,  while 
striving  to  convey  the  rhythm  and  deeper  music  of 
the  sublime  original.  It  was  fitting  that  the  neigh- 
borhood of  Cambridge,  whose  poets  and  scholars  were 
for  the  most  part  sympathetic  lovers  of  Dante,  should 
furnish  a  new  translation  of  the  Commedia.  and  that 
Longfellow  —  less  brilliant  than  Lowell,  whether  as  a 
poet  or  a  student,  but  his  superior  in  patient  industry 
and  evenness  of  taste  —  should  be  the  one  to  make 
14 


Transla- 
tion: 
"  Dante's 
Divine 
Comedy," 
1865-1867. 


Theory  of 
the  work. 


2IO 


HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW. 


Competi- 
tors in  the 
field. 


Merits  of 
Longfel- 
low's ver- 
tion. 


it.  We  are  told  that  his  work  received,  from  time  to 
time,  the  criticism  of  a  pleiad  of  his  friends.  Cer- 
tainly it  was  brought  to  birth  with  heralding  by  Nor- 
ton, —  the  classical  translator  of  "  Vita  Nuova,"  — 
Howells,  Greene,  and  others  of  the  group.  As  for 
the  discussions  which  ensued  upon  its  merits,  my  im- 
pression is  that  points  were  well  taken  on  both  sides. 
Various  other  translations  of  Dante  were  appearing 
about  this  time  —  the  six-hundredth  anniversary  of 
the  Tuscan's  birth:  in  Great  Britain,  those  of  Day- 
man, Ford,  and  Rossetti ;  in  America,  Dr.  Parsons's 
"Inferno"  was  before  the  public,  —  seventeen  cantos 
in  the  rhymed  pentameter  quatrain,  not  so  literal  as 
Longfellow's,  but  the  noble  performance  that  one  might 
expect  from  the  author  of  the  "Lines  on  a  Bust  of 
Dante."  The  best  of  the  English  triad  was  that  of 
Rossetti.  It  bears  the  stamp  of  a  master-hand,  yet 
has  so  many  blemishes,  and  is  here  and  there  so  awk- 
ward, as  to  be  on  the  whole  less  satisfactory  than 
Longfellow's,  to  which  it  is  kindred  in  principle  and 
method. 

The  reader  of  Longfellow's  pages  is  secure  of  a 
faithful  reproduction  of  the  original  order  and  mean- 
ing and  of  Dante's  manner  —  so  far  as  the  latter  de- 
pends on  linear  arrangement.  All  these  are  of  the 
highest  value,  if  the  vital  and  pervading  style  of  the 
lofty  Florentine  can  likewise  be  transferred.  The 
ideal  translator  will  reproduce  all  these  —  the  sense, 
the  metrical  arrangement,  the  grandeur  of  tone.  Un- 
til his  arrival,  if  one  of  these  must  be  sacrificed,  it 
cannot  be  the  first,  and  it  should  be,  I  think,  the  sec- 
ond rather  than  the  third.  One  would  prefer  a  prose 
rendering  of  the  same  rank  with  Mr.  Lang's  "  Ho- 
mer" and  "Theocritus"  to  a  feebly  correct  transcrip- 
tion in  English  verse.     Longfellow  certainly  aimed  to . 


SPIRIT  OF  THE   TRANSLATION. 


211 


meet  all  the  foregoing  requirements,  and  in  his  case 
a  complete  failure  was  scarcely  possible,  even  with 
respect  to  the  third.  But  his  gifts  as  a  translator 
never  were  more  conspicuous  than  when,  in  youth,  he 
paraphrased  and  almost  recreated  so  many  lyrics  from 
the  German  and  other  tongues.  Applying  a  literal 
method  to  the  Commedia,  his  genius  is  less  evident 
than  his  talent  and  conscientious  self-restraint.  What 
he  did  was  to  translate  the  whole  work,  line  for  line, 
almost  as  literally  as  a  class  recitation,  and  this,  bar- 
ring a  few  archaisms,  with  much  simplicity  and  smooth- 
ness. Except  in  the  more  abstruse  cantos,  the  ap- 
pearance of  ease  is  so  marked  that  one  gives  credit 
to  the  story  that  the  poet,  with  his  facility  and  mas- 
tery of  the  text,  accomplished  his  task  in  a  few  years 
by  writing  a  stated  number  of  verses  each  morning, 
while  waiting  for  his  coffee  to  boil.  If  this  were  the 
fact,  it  would  not  do  to  estimate  the  feat  by  it.  Where 
a  man's  genius  lies,  there  he  works  with  ease,  and 
often  undervalues  the  result;  elsewhere,  he  "labors." 
There  is  nothing  labored  in  Longfellow's  translation; 
the  fault  is  of  another  kind :  we  lose,  amid  all  its 
simplicity,  the  "grand  manner,"  as  Mr.  Arnold  would 
call  it,  of  the  divine  master.  A  neophyte  misses  what 
he  expected  to  realize  of  the  unflinching  strength  and 
terror  of  the  Inferno,  the  palpitating  splendor  of  the 
Paradise  The  three  divisions  seem  levelled,  so  to 
speak,  to  the  grade  of  the  Purgatorio,  midway  be- 
tween the  zenith  and  nadir  of  Dante's  song.  This 
shortcoming  is  to  be  felt,  rather  than  proved,  and 
tells  in  favor  of  Parsons's  translation,  and  of  others 
greatly  inferior  to  this  as  a  whole.  Even  Cary's  old- 
fashioned  paraphrase,  full  of  Miltonic  inversions  and 
epithets,  and  thoroughly  open  to  Bentley's  stricture 
on  Pope's  "Homer,"  has  exalted   passages   that  jus- 


Special 
character- 
istics and 
defects. 


212 


HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW. 


Faulty  use 
of  deriva- 
tives. 


tify  its  survival  to  our  day.  Longfellow's  genuine 
scholarship  led  him  to  pursue  his  method,  once  de- 
termined on,  without  the  slightest  protrusion  of  skill 
and  learning.  Grace  is  added  by  the  frequent  use 
of  feminine  endings,  — a  habit  natural  to  Longfellow, 
and  increasing  the  likeness  of  his  own  to  the  original 
verse.  But  his  rendition  of  many  Italian  words  by 
English  derivatives,  which  often  have  quite  lost  the 
etymological  meaning,  is  an  error  made  in  the  inter- 
est of  extreme  fidelity  and  really  telling  against  it. 
A  kindred  one  is  the  use  of  derivatives  in  which  the 
primitive  meaning  is  not  lost,  but  which  do  not  trans- 
late the  text  to  English  ears  so  effectively  as  their 
Saxon  synonyms.  For  instance,  most  of  the  transla- 
tors —  Wright,  Cayley,  Ford,  Rossetti,  etc.  —  have 
made  havoc  with  the  inscription  over  the  gate  of 
hell :  — 

"  Per  me  si  va  nella  citta  dolente ; 

Per  me  si  va  nell'  eterno  dolore ; 

Per  me  si  va  tra  la  perduta  gente." 

Longfellow's  rendering  is  superior  to  all  the  rest :  — 

"  Through  me  the  way  is  to  the  city  dolent ; 
Through  me  the  way  is  to  eternal  dole; 
Through  me  the  way  among  the  people  lost." 

Yet  here  is  a  forced  translation  of  the  word  "  dolente  " 
by  a  derivative  which,  to  English  readers,  is  not  an 
equivalent.  Besides,  a  more  effective  expression  of 
anguish  can  be  gained  by  the  use  of  a  Saxon  word. 
One  step  further  would  have  made  Mr.  Longfellow's 
rendering  perfect :  he  might  have  escaped  an  inver- 
sion, and  have  matched  the  verbal  repetition  in  the 
first  two  lines,  after  this  wise  :  — 

"  Through  me  the  way  is  to  the  wof  ul  city ; 
Through  me  the  way  is  to  eternal  woe." 


MASTERLY  SONNETS. 


2T3 


Reading  the  whole  work,  and  accepting  the  late  Mr. 
Greene's  opinion  that  the  characteristics  of  Dante  are 
Variety  and  Power,  I  think  that  the  evenness  of  Long- 
fellow's method  robs  us  of  the  former ;  and  as  for  the 
latter,  it  is  the  one  thing  which  the  lay  reader  of  this 
translation,  unrivalled  as  it  is  in  many  respects,  does 
not  adequately  feel. 

The  reflex  influence  of  this  effort  was  apparent  in 
the  elevated  nature  of  his  later  poems.  It  is  true 
that  he  occasionally  used  his  new  diction  in  a  prosaic 
or  weary  manner.  Of  this,  such  a  line  as  "  The  spir- 
itual world  preponderates,"  from  the  sonnet  to  Whit- 
tier,  is  an  extreme  instance.  Otherwise,  a  firmer  poetic 
quality  was  observable  after  this  date.  The  sonnets 
which  he  now  wrote,  few  as  they  are,  entitle  him  to  a 
place  in  the  most  select  circle  of  modern  poets.  They 
rank  with  the  best  written  in  our  century.  Where,  in 
fact,  throughout  the  whole  galaxy  of  English  sonnets, 
is  there  a  group  surpassing  the  six  which  accom- 
panied the  Dante  volumes?  Rhythmic,  perfect  in 
structure,  and  full  of  beauty,  they  have  captured  the 
spirit  of  the  Divine  Song.  A  series  written  in  the 
poet's  old  age,  his  tributes  to  the  memory  of  com- 
rades gone  before,  has  a  pathetic  charm.  Still  later 
was  composed  the  sonnet  "Nature,"  which  must  be 
accounted  one  of  the  choicest  in  any  language  upon 
the  theme  to  which  its  title  is  but  a  pass-word:  — 

"As  a  fond  mother,  when  the  day  is  o'er, 

Leads  by  the  hand  her  little  child  to  bed, 

Half  willing,  half  reluctant  to  be  led 
And  leave  his  broken  playthings  on  the  floor, 
Still  gazing  at  them  through  the  open  door, 

Nor  wholly  reassured  and  comforted 

By  promises  of  others  in  their  stead, 
Which,  though  more  splendid,  may  not  please  him  more ; 
So  Nature  deals  with  us,  and  takes  away 


Later 
•work. 


Sonnets  of 

rare 

beauty. 


214 


HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW. 


"  Ultima 

TAule," 

1880. 


Longfel- 
low's 

habits  and 
manner- 
ism. 


Formal 
imagery. 


Our  playthings  one  by  one,  and  by  the  hand 
Leads  us  to  rest  so  gently,  that  we  go 
Scarce  knowing  if  we  wish  to  go  or  stay, 
Being  too  full  of  sleep  to  understand 
How  far  the  unknown  transcends  the  what  we  know." 

This  is,  however,  singularly  like  the  translation,  by- 
Leigh  Hunt,  of  Filicaja^  sonnet  on  Providence,  quoted 
by  Longfellow  himself  in  the  notes  to  the  Paradiso. 
With  lessening  use,  the  poet's  touch  lost  little  of  its 
delicacy  and  poise.  The  few  pieces  brought  together 
in  Ultima  Thule  indicate  that  his  ruling  sense  of  art 
was  clear  as  ever ;  nor  was  it  finally  dulled,  like  Em- 
erson's bright  intelligence,  by  a  veil  of  darkness  slowly 
drawn.  He  ceased  from  service  almost  without  fore- 
warning, and  because  his  work  was  done. 

V. 

Few  poets  have  been  more  restricted  to  fixed  habits 
of  composition.  His  mode  was  perfectly  obvious  and 
unchanged,  save  by  greater  refinement,  during  fifty 
years.  Everything  suggested  an  image,  except  when 
his  imagery  suggested  the  thought  of  which  he  made 
it  seem  a  reflection.     He  tells  us  that 

"  Bent  like  a  laboring  oar  that  toils  in  the  surf  of  the  ocean, 
Bent,  but  not  broken,  by  age  was  the  form  of  the  notary  public  "  ; 

and  we  feel  that  the  image  really  grew  out  of  a  poet's 
conception  of  his  personage.  But  again,  looking  upon 
"  drifting  currents  of  the  river,"  or  finding  the  day 
"cold  and  dark  and  dreary,"  or  listening  to  the  bel- 
fry-chimes, he  hunts  about  for  some  emotion  or  phase 
of  life  which  these  things  aptly  illustrate.  This  pro- 
cess not  seldom  becomes  a  vice  of  style.  He  con- 
stantly applied  his  imagery  in  a  formal  way,  — the  very 
ut  .  .  .  ita  of  the  Latins,  the  as  ...  so  oi  the  eigh- 


HIS  BOOKISH  TENDENCY. 


215 


teenth  century.  But  whether  his  metaphors  came  of 
themselves,  or  with  prayer  and  fasting,  they  always 
came,  and  often  were  novel  and  poetic.  A  more  try- 
ing habit  was  that  inbred,  as  it  seems,  with  the  New 
England  poets,  most  of  whom  have  preached  too  much 
in  verse.  He  tacked  a  didactic  moral,  like  a  corollary 
of  Euclid,  on  many  a  lovely  poem.  No  one  better 
knew  that  "  nothing  is  poetry  which  could  as  well 
have  been  expressed  in  prose,"  but  the  habit  formed 
in  youth  seemed  beyond  his  control.  Still,  it  was 
through  this  habit  that  he  became  the  most  popular  of 
University  poets,  and  as  a  moralist  no  one  could  make 
commonplace  more  attractive.  Lastly,  the  bookish 
flavor  of  his  work  is  at  once  its  strength  and  weakness  : 
the  former,  because  the  very  life  of  his  genius  depended 
on  it ;  the  latter,  because  poetry  that  is  over-literary 
is  so  much  the  less  creative,  and  is  otherwise  open 
to  the  objections  brought  against  literary  art.  Brown- 
ing's fondness  for  black-letter  is  redeemed  by  dramatic 
vigor.  In  reading  Longfellow,  we  see  that  the  world 
of  books  was  to  him  the  real  world.  From  first  to  last, 
if  he  had  been  banished  from  his  library,  his  imagina- 
tion would  have  been  blind  and  deaf  and  silent.  It 
is  true  that  he  fed  upon  the  choicest  yield  of  litera- 
ture ;  his  gathered  honey  was  of  the  thyme  and  clover, 
not  the  rude  buckwheat.  Take,  for  instance,  the 
"  Morituri  Salutamus,"  read  before  his  surviving  class- 
mates on  the  fiftieth  anniversary  of  their  graduation. 
Was  there  ever  anything  more  beautiful,  in  view  of  the 
occasion  ?  Is  not  the  title  itself  a  stroke  of  genius  ? 
But  the  title  also  defines  the  method  of  the  poem  : 
there  are  more  than  twenty  learned  references  in  this 
piece  of  less  than  three  hundred  lines,  including  one 
entire  tale  from  the  "Gesta  Romanorum."  He  had, 
we  see,  this  way  of  working,  and  for  once  it  resulted 
in  a  poem  that  is  the  model  of  its  kind. 


Moraliz- 
ing. 


Excessive 

literary 

flavor. 


"  Mori- 
turi Salu- 
tamus" 
1875. 


2l6     . 


HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW. 


A  poet  of 
the  study 
atidalcove, 


As  for  Nature,  he  usually  saw  it  as  polarized  by  re- 
flection from  the  mirror  Art.  Whether  in  or  out  of 
his  study,  he  had  not  Emerson's  interpretative  eye,  and 
his  report  of  landscape  and  the  country  life  was  less 
genuine  than  Lowell's  or  Whittier's,  not  to  mention 
the  younger  poets.  He  rarely  ventured  beyond  the 
simple  outlook  from  his  mansion  door.  The  effect  of 
the  rain,  the  mist,  the  night-fall,  upon  his  own  spirit, 
is  what  he  gives  us,  in  the  manner  of  some  landscape 
of  the  French  subjective  school.  A  starry  event,  the 
occultation  of  Orion,  at  once  becomes  a  glorious  im- 
age of  the  triumph  of  Love  over  Force.  In  "  Evan- 
geline  "  there  are  refined  pictures  of  scenery  that  was 
familiar  to  him,  with  just  as  pleasing  descriptions  of 
that  which  he  knew  only  through  his  books.  He 
painted  the  landscape  of  half  Europe  in  the  same 
way,  always  a  cosmopolitan,  never  the  genius  of  the 
place.  The  flower-de-luce,  with  its  heraldic  associa- 
tions, is  the  emblem  after  which  he  names  a  volume. 
But  with  respect  to  still  life  and  common  life,  the  true 
genre  touch  of  "  The  Old  Clock "  and  "  The  Village 
Blacksmith "  grows  firmer  in  "  Miles  Standish,"  where 
he  draws  so  well  the  Plymouth  interiors,  the  Puritan 
maiden  at  her  wheel,  the  elders,  and  men-at-arms. 
And  look  !  how  he  describes  what  of  all  is  nearest 
his  heart,  an  olden  volume  :  — 

"  Open  wide  on  her  lap  lay  the  well-worn  psalm-book  of  Ains- 
worth, 

Printed  in  Amsterdam,  the  words  and  the  music  together, 

Rough-hewn,  angular  notes,  like  stones  in  the  walls  of  a  church- 
yard, 

Darkened  and  overhung  by  the  running  vine  of  the  verses. 

Such  was  the  book  from  whose  pages  she  sang  the  old  Puritan 
anthem." 

I  more  than  half    recant   the  statement  that  Long- 


OUR  POET  OF  THE  SEA. 


^7 


fellow  was  not  a  poet  of  Nature,  bethinking  myself 
how  justly  others  have  maintained  that  he  was  by  em- 
inence our  poet  of  the  Sea.  He  clung  to  the  coast : 
looking  inland,  he  cared  most  for  the  tide-meadows  of 
his  neighborhood  j  looking  oceanward,  his  fancy  throve 
upon  the  omens,  the  mysteries,  the  perpetual  fascina- 
tions of  "  sea  from  shore."  He  loved  his  mighty  rock- 
girt  bay,  the  lights  and  beacons,  the  mist  and  fog-bells 
the  sleet  and  surge  of  winter,  the  coastwise  vessels ; 
and  its  memories  were  the  drift-wood  with  which  he 
kindled  "thoughts  that  burned  and  glowed  within." 
His  imagination  goes  out  to  "  the  ocean  old,"  the 
"  gray  old  sea  "  of  storms  and  calms  \  to  its  winged 
frequenters,  the  ancient  galleons,  the  fleets  of  conquest 
and  embassy  and  traffic.  The  names  of  sunny  isles 
and  far-off  lands  were  music  to  him.  If  by  chance 
our  fireside  magician  drowned  his  books  deeper  than 
did  ever  plummet  sound,  and  sang  from  a  poet's  heart 
alone,  it  was  when  he  returned  again  and  again  to 
capture  and  repeat  for  us  the  haunting  "  secret  of  the 
sea." 

Reviewing  our  survey  of  his  work,  I  observe  that 
each  of  his  best  known  efforts  has  led  to  the  mention 
of  prose  or  verse  by  some  other  hand  which  it  re- 
sembles. In  view  of  the  possible  inference,  we  now 
may  ask,  Was  Longfellow,  then,  with  his  great  reputa- 
tion and  indisputable  hold  upon  our  affections,  not  an 
original  poet  ?  It  must  be  acknowledged,  at  the  outset, 
that  few  poets  of  his  standing  have  profited  more 
openly  by  examples  that  suited  their  taste  and  purpose. 
The  evidence  of  this  is  seen  not  in  merely  three  or 
four,  but  in  a  great  number  of  his  productions,  —  in 
his  briefest  lyrics,  in  his  elaborate  narrative  poems. 
Like  greater  bards  before  him,  he  was  a  good  borrower. 
Dependence  on  his  equipment   led  to  unconscious  as- 


Yet  one 
who 

caught  the 
secret  of 
the  Sea. 


Question 
of  his 
origi- 
nality. 


A  persist- 
ent bor- 
rower, but 


2l8 


HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW. 


With  a 

distinctive 

et.tr. 


His  cosmo- 
politan- 
ism, 


And  ideal 
of  a  na- 
tional lit- 
trature. 
See  pp.  5- 
xo,  96,  97. 


similation  of  its  treasures.  But  originality  is  of  more 
than  one  kind.  As  we  say  of  some  people  that  they 
have  a  genius  for  friendship,  so  his  sympathy  with  the 
beautiful,  wherever  he  found  it,  was  unique  and  tan- 
tamount to  a  special  inspiration.  The  proof  of  his 
originality,  however,  even  where  he  was  least  inventive, 
hardly  requires  this  paradox :  it  did  not  consist  in 
word  or  motive,  but  in  the  distinctive  tone  of  the 
singer,  the  sentiment  of  voice  which  made  his  per- 
formances in  a  sense  new  songs  ;  in  an  air,  a  suffused 
quality,  which  rendered  every  phrase  unmistakable.  If 
he  borrowed  freely,  he  was  freely  drawn  upon  by  others 
in  their  turn.  Scores  of  followers  have  caught  a  man- 
ner that  shows  to  poor  advantage  when  transferred; 
but  his  position  for  years,  at  the  head  of  even  a  senti- 
mental school,  indicated  that  Longfellow  was  not  with- 
out a  genius  of  his  own. 

Apart  from  certain  exceptions  already  noted,  his 
bent  was  cosmopolitan.  He  had  the  Anglo-Saxon 
longing  of  the  pine  for  the  palm,  a  love  for  the  softer 
winds  and  skies,  the  pliant  languages,  of  Italy  and 
Spain.  Besides  the  example  of  his  works,  we  have  his 
written  theory  of  what  our  literature  should  be.  His 
Mr.  Churchill,  in  "  Kavanagh,"  declares  that  in  litera- 
ture "  Nationality  is  a  good  thing  to  a  certain  extent, 
but  universality  is  better.  All  that  is  best  in  the  great 
poets  of  all  countries  is  not  what  is  national  in  them, 
but  what  is  universal.  Their  roots  are  in  their  native 
soil ;  but  their  branches  wave  in  the  unpatriotic  air 
that  speaks  the  same  language  unto  all  men.  ...  I 
prefer  what  is  natural.  Mere  nationality  is  often  ridicu- 
lous." And  again,  "  Our  literature  is  not  an  imitation, 
but  a  continuation  of  the  English."  He  insists  upon 
originality,  but  "  without  spasms  and  convulsions." 
..."  A  national  literature  is  not  the  growth  of  a  day 


VIEWS  ON  NATIONALITY. 


219 


Centuries  must  contribute  their  dew  and  sunshine  to 
it.  .  .  .  As  for  having  it  so  savage  and  wild  as  you 
want  it,  .  .  .  all  literature,  as  well  as  all  art,  is  the 
result  of  culture  and  intellectual  refinement.  ...  As 
the  blood  of  all  nations  is  mingling  with  our  own,  so 
will  their  thoughts  and  feelings  finally  mingle  in  our 
literature.  We  shall  draw  from  the  Germans  tender- 
ness, from  the  Spanish  passion,  from  the  French  vi- 
vacity, to  mingle  more  and  more  with  our  English 
solid  sense.  And  this  will  give  us  universality,  so 
much  to  be  desired."  With  regard  to  all  this,  it  may 
be  said  that  Longfellow's  service,  important  as  it  was 
in  his  time,  is  not  that  required  of  his  successors. 
The  greatest  poets  have  been  those  who  conveyed  the 
spirit  of  their  respective  nationalities.  That  poetry 
is  truest  which  is  universal  in  its  passion  and  thought, 
but  national  in  motive  and  in  all  properties  of  the 
craft.  The  final  outcome  of  American  ideality  will 
depend  on  conditions  which  our  best  thinkers  are  in- 
vestigating, and  which  give  rise  to  conflicting  theories. 
Herbert  Spencer's  recent  utterance  is  somewhat  in  ac- 
cordance with  Longfellow's  views  :  "  Because  of  its 
size,  and  the  heterogeneity  of  its  components,  the  Amer- 
ican nation  will  be  a  long  time  in  evolving  its  ultimate 
form,  but  its  ultimate  form  will  be  high."  And  again  : 
"  From  biological  truths  it  is  to  be  inferred  that  the 
eventual  mixture  of  the  allied  varieties  of  the  Aryan 
race  forming  the  population  will  produce  a  finer  type 
of  man  than  has  hitherto  existed."  This  agreeable 
prediction  may  seem  too  optimistic;  but  the  future 
type  of  poetry  certainly  will  represent  the  future  type 
of  man.  Without  debating  the  question  whether  we 
now  are  forming  loam  for  a  distinct  growth,  or  whether 
our  literature  is  to  be  a  "  continuation "  merely,  we 
may  be  sure  that  both  here  and  in  foreign  lands  new 


"  Herbert 

Spencer  on 

the  A  mer- 

icans." 

New 

York, 

1882. 


220 


HENRY  WADS  WORTH  LONGFELLOW. 


Longfel- 
low a  pio- 
7ieer  of 
taste. 


In  what 
sense  a 
"  poet  of 
the  middle 
classes." 


Tennyson. 


types  of  genius  will  appear,  we  know  not  how  or  why, 
and  add  new  species  to  the  world's  flora  symbolica  of 
art  and  song.  Longfellow,  if  not  a  prophet,  was  a 
pioneer,  —  by  choice  an  apostle  of  the  best  traditional 
culture.  His  verse  is  not  of  a  kind  to  make  its  ad- 
mirers indifferent  to  any  other,  —  an  effect,  whether 
for  good  or  ill,  sometimes  produced  by  Browning's, 
Emerson's,  and  Whitman's,  —  but  that  which,  however 
elementary,  promotes  a  taste  for  higher  ideals.  It  is 
due  to  such  as  he  that  we  have  passed  the  age  of 
nursing,  and  are  now  less  satisfied  with  what  is  not 
primarily  our  own.  That  the  best  equipped  section 
of  the  country  should  produce  him  was  in  the  order 
of  events  :  other  things  being  equal,  that  region  is 
most  American  which  has  been  so  the  longest,  and 
the  frontier  steadily  grows  to  resemble  it. 

In  England,  Longfellow  has  been  styled  the  poet 
of  the  middle  classes.  Those  classes  include,  how- 
ever, the  majority  of  intelligent  readers,  and  Tenny- 
son had  an  equal  share  of  their  favor.  The  English 
middle  classes  furnish  an  analogue  to  the  one  great 
class  of  American  readers,  among  whom  our  poet's 
success  was  so  evident.  This  was  because  he  used 
his  culture  not  to  veil  the  word,  but  to  make  it  clear. 
He  drew  upon  it  for  the  people  in  a  manner  which 
they  could  relish  and  comprehend.  Would  not  any 
poet  whose  work  might  lack  the  subtlety  that  com- 
mends itself  to  professional  readers  be  relegated  by 
University  critics  to  the  middle-class  wards  ?  Caste 
and  literary  priesthood  have  something  to  do  with  this. 
Were  it  not  for  "  Lucretius  "  and  "  In  Memoriam," 
the  author  of  "  The  May  Queen  "  and  "  Locksley  Hall  " 
and  "  Enoch  Arden  "  would  be  in  the  same  category ; 
as  it  is,  he  scarcely  escapes  it  in  the  judgment  of  both 
the  psychologic  and  neo-Romantic  schools.     Yet  the 


UNIMPASSWNED  SONG. 


221 


poetry  of  analytics  has  not  outlasted,  in  the  past,  that 
which  came  without  gloss  or  obscurity,  and  whose 
melody  and  meaning  appealed  to  one  and  all.  That 
a  poet's  verse  should  require  a  commentary  in  its  own 
day  is  not,  all  things  considered,  the  best  omen  for 
its  hold  upon  the  future.  But  the  point  taken  with 
respect  to  Longfellow  is  not  unjust.  So  far  as  com- 
fort, virtue,  domestic  tenderness,  and  freedom  from 
extremes  of  passion  and  incident  are  characteristics 
of  the  middle  classes,  he  has  been  their  minstrel. 
And  it  is  true  that  a  cold,  or  even  temperate  quality 
is  deadening  to  the  higher  forms  of  art.  The  crea- 
tive soul  abhors  ennui ;  it  glows  in  dramatic  self-aban- 
donment. Poets  "  of  passion  and  of  pain "  concen- 
trate their  lives  in  some  burning  focus  whose  dazzling 
heat  devours  them  ;  they  suffer,  but  mount  on  their  own 
flame.  Without  passion  and  its  expiations,  without 
the  mad  waste  of  life,  and  even  crime  and  terror,  where 
are  our  noble  tragedies,  our  high  dramatic  themes? 
The  compensation  of  man's  anguish  is  that  it  lifts  him 
beyond  the  ordinary.  Superlative  joy  and  woe  alike 
were  foreign  to  the  verse  of  Longfellow.  It  came  nei- 
ther from  the  heights  nor  out  of  the  depths,  but  along 
the  even  tenor  of  a  fortunate  life.  I  do  not  mean 
that  he  was  exempt  from  mortal  ills ;  he  had  his  dark 
experiences,  but  at  the  mature  age  that  has  learned 
"  what  life  and  death  is,"  and  of  them  he  gave  little 
sign.  If  sorrow  and  rapture  are  from  within,  rather 
than  from  without,  it  may  be  that  our  benignant  poet, 
alike  through  circumstance  and  temperament,  was 
spared  the  full  extremity  of  discipline  signified  in  the 
translation  from  Goethe  :  — 

"Who  ne'er  his  bread  in  sorrow  ate, 

Who  ne'er  the  mournful  midnight  hours 
Weeping  upon  his  bed  has  sate, 
He  knows  you  not,  ye  Heavenly  Powers." 


Poets  and 
their  scho- 
liasts. 


Longfel- 
low's ethics 
and  do- 
mesticity. 


Wanting 
in  ecstasy 
and  dra- 
matic in~ 
sight. 


222 


HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW. 


Fortune's 
favorite. 


A  sympa- 
thetic 
voice,  un- 
perturbed 
by  human 
fassion 
and  con- 
flict. 


Not  his  the  agony  and  bloody  sweat.  We  may  con- 
jecture that,  aside  from  one  or  two  fierce  episodes,  he 
was  less  tried  in  the  furnace  than  poets  are  wont  to 
be.  From  the  first  he  had  what  he  desired,  —  con- 
genial work  and  associations,  advancement,  the  love 
of  women  and  friends,  appreciative  criticism,  the  pure 
wheat  and  sweet  waters  of  life  in  plenitude.  He  had 
lovely  things  about  him,  and  gratified  his  artist  na- 
ture to  the  full,  while  so  many  makers  of  the  beautiful 
are  condemned  to  Vulcan's  cavern  of  toil  and  smoke. 
He  had  the  best,  as  by  right ;  and  in  truth  the  world, 
if  it  but  knew  it,  can  afford  to  keep  a  poet  or  an  artist 
in  some  luxury,  like  a  flower  for  its  perfume,  a  hound 
for  beauty,  a  bird  for  song.  If  Longfellow's  regard 
fell  upon  ugliness  and  misery,  it  certainly  did  not  lin- 
ger there.  "  The  cry  of  the  human  "  did  not  haunt 
his  ear.  When  he  avails  himself  of  a  piteous  situa- 
tion, he  does  so  as  tranquilly  as  the  nuns  who  broi- 
der  on  tapestry  the  torments  of  the  doomed  in  hell. 
He  wrote  few  love  poems,  none  full  of  longing,  or 
"  wild  with  all  regret  "  ;  but  this  might  come  from  the 
absolute  content  of  his  soul,  —  he  had  gained  the 
woman  whom  he  idolized,  and  songs  of  passion  are 
the  cry  of  unfulfilled  desire.  His  song  flows  on  an 
equal  course,  from  sunny  fountain-head  to  darkling 
sea;  and  even  upon  that  sea  he  finds  repose,  for  its 
billows  rock  to  sleep,  and  no  cradle  is  more  peace- 
ful than  the  grave.  Thus  fair,  gentle,  fortunate, — 
could  such  a  poet  answer  to  the  deepest  needs  of 
men  ?  Allowing  for  the  factor  of  imagination,  we  still 
see  that  Longfellow  shrank  from  efforts  that  would 
react  too  keenly  upon  his  sensibilities.  He  touched 
the  average  heart  by  the  sympathetic  quality  of  a  voice 
adjusted  to  the  natural  scale.  People  above  or  apart 
from  the  average  —  sufferers,  aspirants,  questioners  — 


A   LOVABLE  MAN  AND  ARTIST. 


223 


are  irked  by  his  acceptance  of  life  as  it  is  and  his 
enjoyable  relations  to  it.  There  is  something  exas- 
perating to  serious  minds  in  his  placid  waiver  of  things 
grievous  or  distasteful.  They  ask  what  cause  he  has 
advanced,  how  has  he  enlarged  the  province  of  thought, 
what  conflict  has  he  sung?  Where  are  his  rapture, 
his  longing,  his  infinitudes  ?  They  see  his  fellow-poet, 
less  prosperous  and  accomplished,  who  defied  obloquy, 
and  rose  to  passion  in  denouncing  wrong,  —  a  man 
of  peace,  yet  valiant  as  Great-Heart  in  behalf  of  free- 
dom and  the  rights  of  man.  They  recall  another,  who 
sought  out  the  inmost  laws  of  spiritual  life.  But  why 
expect  a  poet  to  be  other  than  he  is  ?  Recognize  the 
instinct  that  defined  his  range,  and  value  the  range 
at  its  worth.  Longfellow  spoke  according  to  his  voice 
and  vision.  The  attempt  to  do  otherwise  ends  all. 
A  critic  must  accept  what  is  best  in  a  poet,  and  thus 
become  his  best  encourager. 

So  far  as  good  fortune  may  be  supplemented  by 
human  wisdom,  Longfellow  was  a  man  after  the 
preacher's  own  heart.  His  was  one  of  those  happy 
natures  which,  as  Thackeray  says,  are  softened  by 
prosperity  and  kindness.  He  was  saved  the  torment 
that  the  envious  feel :  — 

"He  did  not  find  his  sleep  less  sweet 
For  music  in  some  neighboring  street ; 
Nor  rustling  hear  in  every  breeze 
The  laurels  of  Miltiades." 

We  have  seen  his  tact  in  the  choice  and  use  of 
things  pertaining  to  his  work,  his  carefully  restrained 
decoration,  his  knowledge  of  limitations,  which  pre- 
vented him,  except  in  the  dramatic  experiments,  from 
groping  for  impracticable  means  and  results.  The 
forms  which  he  introduced  or  revived  were  as  suc- 
cessful as  Tennyson's ;  in  fact,  his  product  represents 


2  24 


HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW. 


Judgment 
supple- 
menting 
inspira- 
tion. 


Fined 
estimate. 


H.  W.  L. 

died  at 
Cam- 
bridge, 
Mass., 
Mar.  24, 
1882. 


the  full  advance  of  American  taste  and  feeling,  dur- 
ing the  period  covered  by  it,  though  not  our  most  sig- 
nificant thought.  He  was  a  lyrical  artist,  whose  taste 
outranked  his  inspiration ;  and  assuredly,  if  he  had 
been  a  Minister  of  the  Fine  Arts,  he  never  would 
have  abolished  an  ficole  at  the  dictation  of  the  u  im- 
pressionists," nor  have  adopted  as  a  motto  the  phrase 
"  Beware  of  the  Beautiful."  We  have  noted  his  in- 
dustry and  the  self-control  with  which  he  devoted  his 
life  to  poetry  alone.  Yet  the  report  of  his  library  talk 
shows  that  his  brain  was  alert  upon  many  topics  ;  that 
in  private,  at  least,  he  did  not  reserve  his  talents  for 
his  publisher,  —  an  economy  which  a  French  critic 
declares  to  be  "a  bad  sign,  and  the  proof  that  one 
makes  a  trade  of  literature,  and  that  one  does  not 
really  have  the  impressions  he  assumes  to  have  in  his 
books."  His  verse  is  peculiarly  open  to  the  test  of 
Milton's  requirement,  that  poetry  should  be  simple, 
sensuous,  passionate.  Simple,  even  elementary,  it 
manifestly  is,  despite  the  learning  which  he  put  to 
use.  It  is  sensuous  in  much  that  charms  the  ear  and 
eye,  and  in  little  else ;  for  the  extreme  of  sensuousness 
is  deeply  felt,  and  feeling  results  in  passion,  and  pas- 
sionate the  verse  of  Longfellow  was  not,  nor  ever 
could  be.  His  song  was  a  household  service,  the 
ritual  of  our  feastings  and  mournings ;  and  often  it 
rehearsed  for  us  the  tales  of  many  lands,  or,  best  of 
all,  the  legends  of  our  own.  I  see  him,  a  silver-haired 
minstrel,  touching  melodious  keys,  playing  and  sing- 
ing in  the  twilight,  within  sound  of  the  rote  of  the  sea. 
There  he  lingers  late ;  the  curfew  bell  has  tolled  and 
the  darkness  closes  round,  till  at  last  that  tender  voice 
is  silent,  and  he  softly  moves  unto  his  rest. 


CHAPTER    VII 


EDGAR  ALLAN   POE. 


UPON  the  roll  of  American  authors  a  few  names 
are  written  apart  from  the  many.  With  each  of 
these  is  associated  some  accident  of  condition,  some 
memory  of  original  or  eccentric  genius,  through  which 
it  arrests  attention  and  claims  our  special  wonder. 
The  light  of  none  among  these  few  has  been  more  fer- 
vid and  recurrent  than  that  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe.  But, 
as  I  in  turn  pronounce  his  name,  and  in  my  turn 
would  estimate  the  man  and  his  writings,  I  am  at 
once  confronted  by  the  question,  Is  this  poet,  as  now 
remembered,  as  now  portrayed  to  us,  the  real  Poe 
who  lived  and  sang  and  suffered,  and  who  died  but 
little  more  than  a  quarter-century  ago  ? 

The  great  heart  of  the  world  throbs  warmly  over 
the  struggles  of  our  kind;  the  imagination  of  the 
world  dwells  upon  and  enlarges  the  glory  and  the 
shame  of  human  action  in  the  past.  Year  after  year, 
the  heart-beats  are  more  warm,  the  conception  grows 
more  distinct  with  light  and  shade.  The  person  that 
was  is  made  the  framework  of  an  image  to  which  the 
tender,  the  romantic,  the  thoughtful,  the  simple,  and 
the  wise  add  each  his  own  folly  or  wisdom,  his  own 
joy  and  sorrow  and  uttermost  yearning.  Thus,  not 
only  true  heroes  and  poets,  but  many  who  have  been 
conspicuous  through  force   of  circumstances,   become 


Distinc- 
tive repu- 
tations. 


The  witch- 
ery of 
Time. 


226 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 


A  twofold 
ideal. 


Postulates. 


idealized  as  time  goes  by.  The  critic's  first  labor 
often  is  the  task  of  distinguishing  between  men,  as 
history  and  their  works  display  them,  and  the  ideals 
which  one  and  another  have  conspired  to  urge  upon 
his  acceptance. 

The  difficulty  is  increased  when,  as  in  the  case  of 
Poe,  a  twofold  ideal  exists,  of  whose  opposite  sides 
many  that  have  written  upon  him  seem  to  observe 
but  one.  In  the  opinion  of  some  people,  even  now, 
his  life  was  not  only  pitiful,  but  odious,  and  his  writ- 
ings are  false  and  insincere.  They  speak  of  his  mor- 
bid genius,  his  unjust  criticisms,  his  weakness  and  in- 
gratitude, and  scarcely  can  endure  the  mention  of  his 
name.  Others  recount  his  history  as  that  of  a  sensi- 
tive, gifted  being,  most  sorely  beset  and  environed, 
who  was  tried  beyond  his  strength  and  prematurely 
yielded,  but  still  uttered  not  a  few  undying  strains. 
As  a  new  generation  has  arisen,  and  those  of  his  own 
who  knew  him  are  passing  away,  the  latter  class  of 
his  reviewers  seems  to  outnumber  the  former.  A  cho- 
rus of  indiscriminate  praise  has  grown  so  loud  as 
really  to  be  an  ill  omen  for  his  fame  ;  yet,  on  the 
whole,  the  wisest  modern  estimate  of  his  character  and 
writings  has  not  lessened  the  interest  long  ago  felt 
in  them  at  home  and  abroad. 

It  seems  to  me  that  two  things  at  least  are  certain. 
First,  and  although  his  life  has  been  the  subject  of 
the  research  which  is  awarded  only  to  strange  and 
suggestive  careers,  he  was,  after  all,  a  man  of  like 
passions  with  ourselves,  —  one  who,  if  weaker  in  his 
weaknesses  than  many,  and  stronger  in  his  strength, 
may  not  have  been  so  bad,  nor  yet  so  good,  as  one 
and  another  have  painted  him.  Thousands  have  gone 
as  far  toward  both  extremes,  and  the  world  never  has 
heard  of  them.     Only  the  gift  of  genius  has  made  the 


HIS  GENIUS  AND  BEARING. 


227 


temperament  of  Poe  a  common  theme.  And  thus,  I 
also  think,  we  are  sure,  in  once  more  calling  up  his 
shade,  that  we  invoke  the  manes  of  a  poet.  Of  his 
right  to  this  much-abused  title  there  can  be  little  dis- 
pute, nor  of  the  claim  that,  whatever  he  lacked  in 
compass,  he  was  unique  among  his  fellows,  —  so  dif- 
ferent from  any  other  writer  that  America  has  pro- 
duced as  really  to  stand  alone.  He  must  have  had 
genius  to  furnish  even  the  basis  for  an  ideal  which 
excites  this  persistent  interest.  Yes,  we  are  on  firm 
ground  with  relation  to  his  genuineness  as  a  poet. 
But  his  narrowness  of  range,  and  the  slender  body 
of  his  poetic  remains,  of  themselves  should  make 
writers  hesitate  to  pronounce  him  our  greatest  one. 
His  verse  is  as  conspicuous  for  what  it  shows  he 
could  not  do  as  for  that  which  he  did.  He  is  another 
of  those  poets,  outside  the  New  England  school,  of 
whom  each  has  made  his  mark  in  a  separate  way,  — 
among  them  all,  none  more  decisively  than  Poe.  So 
far  as  the  judgment  of  a  few  rare  spirits  in  foreign 
lands  may  be  counted  the  verdict  of  "posterity,"  an 
estimate  of  him  is  not  to  be  lightly  and  flippantly 
made.  Nor  is  it  long  since  a  group  of  his  contem- 
poraries and  successors,  in  his  own  country,  spoke  of 
him  as  a  poet  whose  works  are  a  lasting  monument, 
and  of  his  "  imperishable  "  fame. 

After  every  allowance,  it  seems  difficult  for  one  not 
utterly  jaded  to  read  his  poetry  and  tales  without 
yielding  to  their  original  and  haunting  spell.  Even 
as  we  drive  out  of  mind  the  popular  conceptions  of 
his  nature,  and  look  only  at  the  portraits  of  him  in 
the  flesh,  we  needs  must  pause  and  contemplate, 
thoughtfully  and  with  renewed  feeling,  one  of  the 
marked  ideal  faces  that  seem — like  those  of  Byron, 
De   Musset,   Heine  —  to   fulfil   all   the   traditions   of 


Unique 
quality  of 
Poe^s  gen- 
ius. 


Personal 
aspect. 


228 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 


Hatpin's 
likeness  of 
Poe,  in  the 
complete 
A  merican 
edition. 


Later 
portraits. 


Repro- 
duced 
in  the 


genius,  of   picturesqueness,   of    literary   and   romantic 
effect. 

Halpin's  engraving  of  Poe,  in  which  the  draughts- 
man was  no  servile  copyist,  but  strove  to  express  the 
sitter  at  his  best,  makes  it  possible  to  recall  the  poet 
delineated  by  those  who  knew  and  admired  him  in 
his  nobler  seasons.  We  see  one  they  describe  as 
slight  but  erect  of  figure,  athletic  and  well  moulded, 
of  middle  height,  but  so  proportioned  as  to  seem 
every  inch  a  man  ;  his  head  finely  modelled,  with  a 
forehead  and  temples  large  and  not  unlike  those  of 
Bonaparte;  his  hands  fair  as  a  woman's,  —  in  all,  a 
graceful,  well-dressed  gentleman,  —  one,  even  in  the 
garb  of  poverty,  "  with  gentleman  written  all  over 
him."  We  see  the  handsome,  intellectual  face,  the 
dark  and  clustering  hair,  the  clear  and  sad  gray-violet 
eyes,  —  large,  lustrous,  glowing  with  expression,  —  the 
mouth,  whose  smile  at  least  was  sweet  and  winning. 
We  imagine  the  soft,  musical  voice  (a  delicate  thing 
in  man  or  woman),  the  easy,  quiet  movement,  the 
bearing  that  no  failure  could  humble.  And  this  man 
had  not  only  the  gift  of  beauty,  but  the  passionate 
love  of  beauty,  —  either  of  which  may  be  as  great  a 
blessing  or  peril  as  can  befall  a  human  being  stretched 
upon  the  rack  of  this  tough  world. 

But  look  at  some  daguerreotype  taken  shortly  be- 
fore his  death,  and  it  is  like  an  inauspicious  mirror, 
that  shows  all  too  clearly  the  ravage  made  by  a  vexed 
spirit  within,  and  loses  the  qualities  which  only  a  liv- 
ing artist  could  feel  and  capture.  Here  is  the  dra- 
matic, defiant  bearing,  but  with  it  the  bitterness  of 
scorn.  The  disdain  of  an  habitual  sneer  has  found 
an  abode  on  the  mouth,  yet  scarcely  can  hide  the 
tremor  of  irresolution.  In  Bendann's  likeness,  indu- 
bitably faithful,  we  find  those  hardened   lines  of  the 


A    TWOFOLD  NATURE. 


229 


chin  and  neck  that  are  often  visible  in  men  who  have 
gambled  heavily,  which  Poe  did  not  in  his  mature 
years,  or  who  have  lived  loosely  and  slept  ill.  The 
face  tells  of  battling,  of  conquering  external  enemies, 
of  many  a  defeat  when  the  man  was  at  war  with  his 
meaner  self. 

Among  the  pen-portraits  of  Poe,  at  his  best  and 
his  worst,  none  seem  more  striking  in  their  juxtaposi- 
tion, none  less  affected  by  friendship  or  hatred,  than 
those  left  to  us  by  C.  F.  Briggs,  the  poet's  early  asso- 
ciate. These  were  made  but  a  short  time  before  the 
writer's  death,  —  after  the  lapse  of  years  had  softened 
the  prejudices  of  a  man  prejudiced  indeed,  yet  of  a 
kindly  heart,  and  had  rendered  the  critical  habit  of 
the  journalist  almost  a  rule  of  action. 

If  these  external  aspects  were  the  signs  of  charac- 
ter within,  we  can  understand  why  those  who  saw 
them  should  have  believed  of  Poe  —  and  in  a  differ- 
ent sense  than  of  Hawthorne  —  that 

"Two  natures  in  him  strove 
Like  day  with  night,  his  sunshine  and  his  gloom." 

The  recorded  facts  of  his  life  serve  to  enhance  this 
feeling.  My  object  here  is  not  biography,  yet  let  us 
note  the  brief  annals  of  a  wayward,  time-tossed  critic, 
romancer,  poet.  Their  purport  and  outline,  seen 
through  a  cloud  of  obscurities,  and  the  veil  thrown 
over  them  by  his  own  love  of  mystery  and  retreat,  — 
made  out  from  the  various  narratives  of  those  who 
have  contended  in  zeal  to  discover  the  minute  affairs 
of  this  uncommon  man,  —  the  substance  of  them  all, 
I  say,  may  readily  enough  be  told. 


230 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POL. 


Edgar  Al- 
lan Poe : 
born  in 
Boston, 
January 
19,  1809. 


His  child- 
hood. 


II. 

The  law  of  chance,  that  has  so  much  to  do  with 
the  composition  of  a  man,  that  makes  no  two  alike, 
yet  adjusts  the  most  of  us  to  a  common  average, 
brings  about  exceptional  unions  like  the  one  from 
which  the  poet  sprang.  A  well-born,  dissolute  Mary- 
land boy,  with  a  passion  for  the  stage,  marries  an 
actress  and  adopts  her  profession,  —  taking  up  a  life 
that  was  strolling,  precarious,  half  -  despised  in  the 
pioneer  times.  Three  children  were  the  fruit  of  this 
love-match.  The  second,  Edgar,  was  born  in  Boston, 
January  19,  1809.  From  his  father  he  inherited  Ital- 
ian, French,  and  Irish  blood;  the  Celtic  pride  of  dis- 
position and  certain  weaknesses  that  were  his  bane. 
His  mother,  Elizabeth  Arnold,  an  actress  of  some  tal- 
ent, was  as  purely  English  as  her  name.  Two  years 
after  his  birth,  the  hapless  parents,  wearied  and  des- 
titute, died  at  Richmond,  both  in  the  same  week. 
The  orphans  "  found  kind  friends,"  and  were  adopted 
—  the  oldest,  William,  by  his  grandfather  Poe,  of  Bal- 
timore;  Edgar  and  Rosalie  by  citizens  of  Richmond. 
Edgar  gained  a  protector  in  Mr.  Allan,  an  English- 
born  and  wealthy  merchant,  who  was  married,  but 
without  a  child.  The  boy's  beauty  and  precocity  won 
the  heart  of  this  gentleman,  who  gave  him  his  name, 
and  lavished  upon  him,  in  true  Southern  style,  all 
that  perilous  endearment  which  befits  the  son  and 
heir  of  a  generous  house.  Servants,  horses,  dogs,  the 
finest  clothes,  a  purse  well  filled,  all  these  were  at  his 
disposal  from  the  outset.  Great  pains  were  taken 
with  his  education,  the  one  element  of  moral  disci- 
pline seemingly  excepted.  When  eight  years  old  he 
went  with  Mr.  Allan  to  England,  and  was  at  the 
school  in  Stoke-Newington,  to  which  it  is  thought  his 


FIRST  BOOK   OF  POEMS. 


231 


memory  went  back  in  after  years,  when  he  wrote  the 
tale  of  "William  Wilson."  At  ten  we  find  him  at 
school  in  Richmond,  proficient  in  classical  studies 
but  shirking  his  mathematics,  already  writing  verse, — 
instinctively 

"  Seeking  with  hand  and  heart 
The  teacher  whom  he  learned  to  love 
Before  he  knew  't  was  Art." 

His  grace  and  strength,  his  free,  romantic,  and  ardent 
bearing,  made  him  friends  among  old  and  young,  and 
at  this  time  he  certainly  was  capable  of  the  most 
passionate  loyalty  to  those  he  loved.  Traditions  of 
all  this  —  of  his  dreamy,  fitful  temperament,  of  his 
early  sorrows  and  his  midnight  mournings  over  the 
grave  of  an  affectionate  woman  who  had  been  his 
paragon  —  are  carefully  preserved.  He  was  a  school- 
boy, here  and  there,  until  1826,  when  he  passed  a 
winter  at  the  University  of  Virginia.  He  ended  his 
brief  course  in  the  school  of  ancient  and  modern  lan- 
guages with  a  successful  examination,  but  after  much 
dissipation  and  gambling  which  deeply  involved  him 
in  debt.  His  thoughtlessness  and  practical  ingrati- 
tude justly  incensed  an  unwise  but  hitherto  devoted 
guardian.  A  rupture  followed  between  the  two,  Mr. 
Allan  finally  refusing  to  countenance  Edgar's  extrav- 
agances ;  and  the  young  man  betook  himself  to  Bos- 
ton, where,  after  a  few  months,  he  succeeded  in  find 
ing  a  printer  for  his  first  little  book,  a  revised  collec- 
tion of  juvenile  poems.  But  he  was  soon  reduced  to 
straits,  and  driven  to  enlistment,  under  a  partly  ficti- 
tious name,  as  a  soldier;  in  which  capacity,  first  a 
private  and  then  by  promotion  a  sergeant-major,  he 
served  his  country  for  almost  two  years.  In  1829  he 
was  touched  by  news  of  the  death  of  Mrs.  Allan, 
who   had   always  given   him   a  sympathetic   mother's 


Training. 


College 
life. 


"  Tamer- 
lane and 
Other 
Poems? 
Boston, 
1827.      Re- 
printed., 
with 
changes 
and  omis- 
sions, 
Baltimore, 
1829. 

Enlistment 
in  the 
army. 


232 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 


"  Edgar 
Allan 
Poe."    By 
G.E. 
Wood- 
berry  : 
Boston, 
1885. 


West 
Point. 


Subscrip- 
tion edition 
of  his 
poems : 
New 
York, 
1831. 


love.  He  obtained  a  furlough,  and  effected  a  recon- 
ciliation with  the  widower  in  his  hour  of  loneliness 
and  sorrow.  Poe's  later  and  trustworthy  biographer 
has  spared  no  pains  to  give  the  true  details  of  the 
youth's  enlistment,  service,  and  final  discharge  through 
the  influence  of  his  early  protector. 

About  this  time  he  visited  his  aunt,  Mrs.  Maria 
Clemm,  of  Baltimore.  Her  daughter  Virginia  was 
then  six  years  old,  and  Poe  interested  himself  in  the 
sweet  and  gentle  child,  who  loved  him  from  the  first, 
and  made  his  will  her  law  through  girlhood  and  their 
subsequent  wedded  life. 

Poe  now  was  asked  to  choose  a  profession ;  he 
selected  that  of  arms,  and  his  benefactor  secured  his 
admission  to  West  Point.  Here  we  find  him  in  1830, 
and  find  little  good  of  him.  Though  now  a  man 
grown,  he  was  unable  to  endure  discipline.  After  a 
first  success,  he  tired  of  the  place  and  brought  about 
his  own  expulsion  and  disgrace,  to  his  patron's  deep, 
and  this  time  lasting,  resentment.  But  here  he  also 
arranged  for  the  issue,  by  subscription,  of  another 
edition  of  his  poems,  which  was  delivered  to  his  class- 
mates after  his  departure  from  the  academy. 

A  new  personage  now  comes  upon  the  scene.  Mr. 
Allan,  naturally  desiring  affection  from  some  quarter, 
married  again,  and  after  a  time  heirs  were  born  to  the 
estate  which  Poe,  had  he  been  less  reckless,  might 
have  inherited.  The  poet,  returning  in  disgrace  to 
Richmond,  found  no  intercessor  in  the  home  of  his 
youth.  This  change,  and  his  manner  of  life  thus  far, 
render  it  needless  to  look  for  other  causes  of  the 
final  rupture  between  himself  and  his  guardian.  It 
was  the  just  avenge  of  fate  for  his  persistent  folly,  and 
a  defeat  was  inevitable  in  his  contest  (if  there  was  a 
contest)  with  a  lady  who,  by  every  law  of  right,  was 


LIFE  AND  LITERARY  CAREER. 


233 


His  one 
ally. 


stronger  than  he.  Poe  went  out  into  the  world  with  a 
full  permission  to  have  the  one  treasure  he  had 
seemed  to  value  —  his  own  way.  Like  a  multitude  of 
American  youths,  often  the  sons  or  grandsons  of  suc- 
cessful men,  he  found  himself  of  age,  without  the 
means  proportionate  to  the  education,  habits,  and 
needs  of  a  gentleman,  and  literally,  in  the  place  of  an 
unfailing  income,  without  a  cent.  Better  off  than 
many  who  have  erred  less,  he  had  one  strong  ally  — 
his  pen.  With  this  he  was  henceforth  to  earn  his 
own  bed  and  board,  and  lead  the  arduous  life  of  a 
working  man  of  letters. 

For  the  struggle  now  begun  his  resources  of  tact, 
good  sense,  self-poise,  were  as  deficient  as  his  intel- 
lectual equipment  was  great.  Soon  after  the  loss  of  a 
home-right,  which  he  forfeited  more  recklessly  than 
Esau,  his  professional  career  may  be  said  to  have  be- 
gun. It  extended,  with  brief  but  frequent  intermis- 
sions, from  1832  to  1849,  the  year  of  his  untimely 
death.  Its  first  noteworthy  event  was  the  celebrated 
introduction  to  Kennedy,  Latrobe,  and  Miller,  through 
his  success  in  winning  a  literary  prize  with  "A  MS. 
Found  in  a  Bottle."  This  brought  him  friends,  work, 
and  local  reputation,  —  in  all,  a  fair  and  well-earned 
start. 

Seventeen  years,  thenceforward,  of  working  life,  in 
which  no  other  American  writer  was  more  active  and 
prominent.  I  have  considered  elsewhere  the  influence 
of  journalism  upon  authorship.  It  enabled  Poe  to 
live.  On  the  other  hand,  while  he  rarely  made  his 
lighter  work  commonplace,  it  limited  the  importance 
of  his  highest  efforts,  gave  a  paragraphic  air  to  his 
criticisms,  and  left  some  of  his  most  suggestive  writ- 
ings mere  fragments  of  what  they  should  be.  He 
discovered   the    pretentious    mediocrity  of    a  host    of 


A  good 
start. 


Summary 
of  his 
career. 


See  Chap. 
XI.,  a?id 
cp.  "  Vic- 
torian 
Poets": 
pp.  81,  82. 


2  34 


EDGAR  ALLAN  FOE. 


Head  and 
heart. 


"  The  Imp 
of  the  Per- 


Precari- 
ous  life  of 
A  merican 
authors  at 
that  time. 


scribblers,  and  when  unbiased  by  personal  feeling, 
and  especially  when  doing  imaginative  work,  was  one 
of  the  few  clear-headed  writers  of  his  day.  He  knew 
what  he  desired  to  produce,  and  how  to  produce  it. 
We  say  of  a  man  that  his  head  may  be  wrong,  but  his 
heart  is  all  right.  There  were  times  enough  when  the 
reverse  of  this  was  true  of  Poe.  I  do  not  say  there 
were  not  other  times  when  his  heart  was  as  sound  as 
his  perceptions.  What,  after  all,  is  the  record  of  his 
years  of  work,  and  what  is  the  significance  of  that 
record  ?  We  must  consider  the  man  in  his  environ- 
ment, and  the  transient,  uncertain  character  of  the 
markets  to  which  he  brought  his  wares.  His  labors, 
then,  were  continually  impeded,  broken,  changed ;  first, 
by  the  most  trying  and  uncontrollable  nature  that  ever 
poet  possessed,  that  ever  possessed  a  poet;  by  an 
unquiet,  capricious  temper,  a  childish  enslavement  to 
his  own  "  Imp  of  the  Perverse,"  a  scornful  pettiness 
that  made  him  "hard  to  help,"  that  drove  him  to 
quarrel  with  his  patient,  generous  friends,  and  to  wage 
ignoble  conflict  with  enemies  of  his  own  making;  by 
physical  and  moral  lapses,  partly  the  result  of  inher- 
ited taint,  in  which  he  resorted,  more  or  less  fre- 
quently, and  usually  at  critical  moments,  —  seasons 
when  he  needed  all  his  resources,  all  his  courage  and 
manhood,  —  to  stimulants  which  he  knew  would  mad- 
den and  besot  him  more  than  other  men.  None  the 
less  his  genius  was  apparent,  his  power  felt,  his  labor 
in  demand  wherever  the  means  existed  to  pay  for  it. 
But  here,  again,  his  life  was  made  precarious  and 
shifting  by  the  speculative,  ill-requited  nature  of  lit- 
erary enterprises  at  that  time.  From  various  causes, 
therefore,  his  record  —  no  matter  how  it  is  attacked 
or  defended  —  is  one  of  irregularity,  of  broken  and 
renewed  engagements.     From  1832  to  1835  P°e  had 


THIS   WORKING-DAY  WORLD: 


235 


but  himself  to  support,  and  a  careless  young  fellow 
always  gets  on  so  long  as  he  is  young,  with  one  suc- 
cess and  the  chance  of  a  future.  The  next  year  his 
private  marriage  to  his  sweet  cousin  Virginia,  still 
almost  a  child,  was  reaffirmed  in  public,  and  the  two 
set  up  their  home  together.  The  time  had  come  when 
Poe,  with  his  sense  of  the  fitness  of  things,  could  see 
that  Bohemianism,  the  charm  of  youth,  is  a  frame 
that  poorly  suits  the  portrait  of  a  mature  and  able- 
handed  man.  So  we  are  not  surprised  to  find  him 
engaged,  for  honest  wages,  upon  "  The  Southern  Liter- 
ary Messenger."  That  his  skilful  touch  and  fantastic 
genius,  whether  devoted  to  realistic  or  psychological 
invention,  were  now  at  full  command,  is  shown  by  his 
"  Hans  Pfaall,"  and  by  his  first  striking  contribution 
to  the  "Messenger,"  the  spectral  and  characteristic 
tale  of  "  Berenice."  In  short,  he  did  uncommon  work, 
for  that  time,  upon  the  famous  Southern  magazine, 
both  as  tale-writer  and  as  critic,  and  increased  its 
reputation  and  income.  Yet  he  felt,  with  all  the  mor- 
bid sensitiveness  of  one  spoilt  by  luxury  and  arro- 
gance in  youth,  the  difference  between  his  present 
work -a- day  life  and  the  independence,  the  social 
standing,  which  if  again  at  his  command  would  ena- 
ble him  to  indulge  his  finer  tastes  and  finish  at  ease 
the  work  best  suited  to  his  powers.  From  this  time 
he  was  subject  to  moods  of  brooding  and  despair,  of 
crying  out  upon  fate,  that  were  his  pest  and  his  ulti- 
mate destruction.  And  so  we  again  are  not  surprised 
to  find  this  good  beginning  no  true  omen  of  the  fif- 
teen years  to  come  ;  and  that  these  years  are  counted 
by  flittings  here  and  there  between  points  that  offered 
employment;  by  new  engagements  taken  up  before 
he  was  off  with  the  old ;  by  legends  of  his  bearing 
and  entanglements  in  the  social  world  he  entered  \  by 


Marriage 
with  Vir- 
ginia 
Clemm, 


Journal- 
ism. 


Mental 
suffering. 


Wander- 
ings. 


236 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 


Work. 


Mis/or 
tunes. 


Death,  in 
Baltimore, 
October  7, 
1849. 


alternate  successes  and  disgraces,  in  Richmond,  Phil- 
adelphia, Boston,  New  York ;  by  friendships  and  fall- 
ings out  with  many  of  the  editors  who  employed  him, 
—  the  product,  after  all,  with  which  we  are  chiefly 
concerned  being  his  always  distinctive  writings  for  the 
"Quarterly,"  "The  Gentleman's  Magazine,"  "Gra- 
ham's," "Godey's,"  "The  Mirror,"  "The  American 
Review,"  and  various  other  fosterers  and  distributers 
of  such  literature  as  the  current  taste  might  demand. 
We  begin  to  understand  his  spasmodic,  versatile  indus- 
try, his  balks  and  breaks,  his  frequent  poverty,  de- 
spondency, self-abandonment,  and  almost  to  wonder 
that  the  sensitive  feminine  spirit  —  worshipping  beauty 
and  abhorrent  of  ugliness  and  pain,  combating  with 
pride,  with  inherited  disease  of  appetite  —  did  not 
sooner  yield,  was  not  utterly  overcome  almost  at  the 
outset  of  these  experiences.  So  have  I  wondered  at 
seeing  a  delicate  forest-bird,  leagues  from  the  shore, 
keep  itself  on  the  wing  above  relentless  waters  into 
which  it  was  sure  to  fall  at  last.1  Poe  had  his  food 
genius  and  his  bad.  Near  the  close  of  the  struggle 
he  made  a  brave  effort,  and  never  was  so  earnest  and 
resolved,  so  much  his  own  master,  as  just  before  the 
end.  But  a  man  is  no  stronger  than  his  weakest  part, 
and  with  the  snapping  of  that  his  chance  is  over.  At 
the  moment  when  the  poet,  rallying  from  the  desola- 
tion caused  by  the  loss  of  his  wife,  found  new  hope 


1  Finely  paraphrased,    since  the    original  appearance  of    this 
chapter,  by  my  friend,  Mr.  Winter  :  — 

"  Far  from  the  blooming  field  and  fragrant  wood 
The  shining  songster  of  the  summer  sky, 
O'er  ocean's  black  and  frightful  solitude, 
Driven  on  broken  wing,  must  sink  and  die"; 

Poem  read  at  the  Dedicatioti  of  the  Actors'  Monument 
to  Poe,  May  4,  1885. 


FOLLOWING   THE  MARKET. 


237 


and  purpose,  and  was  on  his  way  to  marry  a  woman 
who  possibly  might  have  saved  him,  the  tragedy  of 
his  life  began  again.  Its  final  scene  was  as  swift, 
irreparable,  black  with  terror,  as  that  of  any  drama 
ever  written.  His  death  was  gloom.  Men  saw  him 
no  more ;  but  the  shadow  of  a  veiled  old  woman, 
mourning  for  him,  hovered  here  and  there.  After 
many  years  a  laurelled  tomb  was  placed  above  his 
ashes,  and  there  remain  to  American  literature  the 
relics,  so  unequal  in  value,  of  the  most  isolated  and 
exceptional  of  all  its  poets  and  pioneers. 

Poe's  misfortunes  were  less  than  those  of  some  who 
have  conquered  misfortune.  Others  have  been  cast- 
aways in  infancy  and  friendless  in  manhood,  and  have 
found  no  protectors  such  as  came  at  his  need.  Still 
others  have  struggled  and  suffered,  and  have  declined 
to  wear  their  hearts  upon  their  sleeves.  They  have 
sought  consolation  in  their  work,  and  from  their  bit- 
ter experiences  have  gathered  strength  and  glory. 
The  essential  part  of  an  artist's  life  is  that  of  his  in- 
spired moments.  There  were  occasions  when  Poe  was 
the  master,  when  his  criticism  was  true,  when  he  com- 
posed such  tales  as  "  Ligeia,"  "  The  Fall  of  the  House 
of  Usher,"  poems  like  "The  Raven,"  "The  Bells," 
"The  City  in  the  Sea."  It  must  be  acknowledged, 
moreover  —  and  professional  writers  know  what  this 
implies  —  that  Poe,  in  his  wanderings,  after  all,  fol- 
lowed his  market.  It  gradually  drifted  to  the  North, 
until  New  York  afforded  the  surest  recompense  to 
authors  not  snugly  housed  in  the  leafy  coverts  of  New 
England.  Nor  did  he  ever  resort  to  any  mercantile 
employment  for  a  livelihood.  As  we  look  around  and 
see  how  authors  accept%iis  or  that  method  of  support, 
there  seems  to  be  something  chivalrous  in  the  attitude 
of  one  who  never  earned  a  dollar  except  by  his  pen. 


Mrs. 

Maria 

Clemm. 


238 


EDGAR  ALLAN  FOE. 


A  genuine 
man  of 
letters. 


Interest 
excited  by 
Foe's  life 
andworks. 


"  Tales  of 
the  Gro- 
tesque and 
Ara- 
besque•," 
1840. 


From  first  to  last  he  was  simply  a  poet  and  man  of 
letters,  who  rightly  might  claim  to  be  judged  by  the 
literary  product  of  his  life.  The  life  itself  differed 
from  that  of  any  modern  poet  of  equal  genius,  and 
partly  because  none  other  has  found  himself,  in  a  new 
country,  among  such  elements.  Too  much  has  been 
written  about  the  man,  too  little  of  his  times. 

His  story  has  had  a  fascination  for  those  who  con- 
sider the  infirmity  of  genius  its  natural  outward  sign. 
The  peculiarity  of  his  actions  was  their  leaning  toward 
what  is  called  the  melodramatic ;  of  his  work,  that  it 
aimed  above  the  level  of  its  time.  What  has  been 
written  of  the  former  —  of  little  value  as  compared 
with  the  analysis  derivable  from  his  literary  remains  — 
was  for  a  long  time  the  output  of  those  who,  if  unable 
to  produce  a  stanza  which  he  would  have  acknowl- 
edged, at  least  felt  within  themselves  the  possibilities 
of  his  errant  career.  Yet,  as  I  observe  the  marvels  of 
his  handicraft,  I  seem  unjust  to  these  enthusiasts.  It 
was  the  kind  which  most  impresses  the  imagination  of 
youth,  and  youth  is  a  period  at  which  the  critical  de- 
velopment of  many  biographers  seems  to  be  arrested. 
And  who  would  not  recall  the  zest  with  which  he  read, 
in  school-boy  days,  and  by  the  stolen  candle,  a  legend 
so  fearful  in  its  beauty  and  so  beautiful  in  its  fear  as 
"  The  Masque  of  the  Red  Death,"  for  example,  found 
in  some  stray  number  of  a  magazine,  and  making  the 
printed  trash  that  convoyed  it  seem  so  vapid  and 
drear  ?  Not  long  after,  we  had  the  collected  series, 
Tales  of  the  Grotesque  and  Arabesque.  With  what  ea- 
gerness we  caught  them  from  hand  to  hand  until  many 
of  us  knew  them  almost  by  heart.  In  the  East,  at  that 
time,  Hawthorne  was  shyly  putting  out  his  "  Mosses  " 
and  "  Twice  Told  Tales,"  and  it  was  not  an  unfruitful 
period  that  fostered,  among  its  brood  of  chattering  and 


HIS  LYRICAL  REMAINS. 


2  39 


aimless  sentimentalists,  two  such  spirits  at  once,  each 
original  in  his  kind.  To-day  we  have  a  more  con- 
summate, realistic  art.  But  where,  now,  the  creative 
ardor,  the  power  to  touch  the  stops,  if  need  be,  of 
tragedy  and  superstition  and  remorse !  Our  taste  is 
more  refined,  our  faculties  are  under  control ;  to  pro- 
duce the  greatest  art  they  must,  at  times,  compel  the 
artist.  "  Poetry,"  said  Poe,  "  has  been  with  me  a 
passion,  not  a  purpose,"  —  a  remarkable  sentence  to 
be  found  in  a  boyish  preface,  and  I  believe  that  he 
wrote  the  truth.  But  here,  again,  he  displays  an  op- 
posite failing.  If  poetry  had  been  with  him  no  less  a 
passion,  and  equally  a  purpose,  we  now  should  have 
had  something  more  to  represent  his  rhythmical  genius 
than  the  few  brief,  occasional  lyrics  which  are  all  that 
his  thirty  years  of  life  as  a  poet  —  the  life  of  his  early 
choice  —  have  left  to  us. 


III. 

In  estimating  him  as  a  poet,  the  dates  of  these  lyrics 
are  of  minor  consequence.  They  make  but  a  thin 
volume,  smaller  than  one  which  might  hold  the  verse 
of  Collins  or  Gray.  Their  range  is  narrower  still.  It 
is  a  curious  fact  that  Poe  struck,  in  youth,  the  key- 
notes of  a  few  themes,  and  that  some  of  his  best  pieces, 
as  we  now  have  them,  are  but  variations  upon  their 
earlier  treatment. 

His  first  collection  was  made  in  his  eighteenth  year, 
revised  in  his  twentieth,  and  again  reprinted,  with 
changes  and  omissions,  just  after  he  left  West  Point. 
The  form  of  the  longer  poems  is  copied  from  Byron 
and  Moore,  while  the  spirit  of  the  whole  series  vaguely 
{  reminds  us  of  Shelley  in  his  obscurer  lyrical  mood. 
Poe's  originality  can  be  found  in  them,  but  they  would 


Poetry  a 
Passion 
with  Aim. 


Lyrical 
remains. 


Early 
books  of 
verse : 
printed, 
respective' 
ly,  in  1827, 
1829,  and 
183  r. 


240 


EDGAR  ALLAN  FOE. 


Germs  of 
his  later 
poems. 


His  use  of 
foesy. 


Precocity. 


be  valueless  except  for  his  after  career.  They  have 
unusual  significance  as  the  shapeless  germs  of  much 
that  was  to  grow  into  form  and  beauty.  Crude  and 
wandering  pieces,  entitled  "  Fairy  Land  "  and  "  Irene," 

"  To ,"    "  A  Paean,"    etc.,  were  the   originals  of 

"  The  Sleeper,"  "  A  Dream  within  a  Dream,"  and 
"Lenore";  while  "The  Doomed  City"  and  "The 
Valley  Nis "  reappear  as  "  The  City  in  the  Sea " 
and  "  The  Valley  of  Unrest."  Others  were  less  thor- 
oughly rewritten.  Possibly  he  thus  remodelled  his 
juvenile  verse  to  show  that,  however  inchoate,  it 
contained  something  worth  a  master's  handling.  Mr. 
Stoddard  thinks,  and  not  without  reason,  that  he  found 
it  an  easy  way  of  making  salable  "copy."  The  poet 
himself  intimates  that  circumstances  beyond  his  con- 
trol restricted  his  lyrical  product.  I  scarcely  remember 
another  instance  where  a  writer  has  so  hoarded  his 
early  songs,  and  am  in  doubt  whether  to  commend  or 
deprecate  their  reproduction.  It  does  not  betoken 
affluence,  but  it  was  honest  in  Poe  that  he  would  not 
write  in  cold  blood  for  the  mere  sake  of  composing. 
This  he  undoubtedly  had  the  skill  to  do,  and  would 
have  done,  if  his  sole  object  had  been  creation  of  the 
beautiful,  or  art  for  art's  sake.  He  used  his  lyrical  gift 
mostly  to  express  veritable  feelings  and  moods  —  I 
might  almost  say  a  single  feeling  or  mood  —  to  which 
he  could  not  otherwise  give  utterance,  resorting  to  mel- 
ody when  prose  was  insufficient.  Herein  he  was  true 
to  the  cardinal,  antique  conception  of  poesy,  and  in 
keeping  it  distinct  from  his  main  literary  work  he  con- 
firmed his  own  avowal  that  it  was  to  him  a  passion, 
and  neither  a  purpose  nor  a  pursuit. 

A  few  poems,  just  as  they  stood  in  his  early  vol- 
umes, are  admirable  in  thought  or  finish.  One  is  the 
sonnet,  "  To  Science,"  which  is  striking,  not  as  a  son- 


THE  RAVEN  AND   OTHER  POEMS. 


24I 


net,  but  for  its  premonition  of  attitudes  which  poetry 
and  science  have  now  more  clearly  assumed.  Another 
is  the  exquisite  lyric,  "  To  Helen,"  which  every  critic 
longs  to  cite.  Its  confusion  of  imagery  is  wholly  for- 
gotten in  the  delight  afforded  by  melody,  lyrical  per- 
fection, sweet  and  classic  grace.  I  do  not  understand 
why  he  omitted  this  charming  trifle  from  the  juvenile 
poems  which  he  added  to  the  collection  of  1845.  A1" 
though  it  first  appeared  in  his  edition  of  1831,  he 
claimed  to  have  written  it  when  fourteen,  and  nothing 
more  fresh  and  delicate  came  from  his  pen  in  maturer 
years. 

The  instant  success  of  "  The  Raven  "  —  and  this 
was  within  a  few  years  of  his  death  —  first  made  him 
popular  as  a  poet,  and  resulted  in  a  new  collection  of 
his  verses.  The  lyrics  which  it  contained,  and  a  few 
written  afterward,  —  " Ulalume,"  "The  Bells,"  "For 
Annie,"  etc.,  —  now  comprise  the  whole  of  his  poetry 
as  retained  in  the  standard  editions.  The  most  glaring 
faults  of  "AlAaraaf"  and  "Tamerlane"  have  been 
selected  by  eulogists  for  special  praise.  Turning  from 
this  practice-work  to  the  poems  which  made  his  rep- 
utation, we  come  at  once  to  the  most  widely  known 
of  all. 

Poe  could  not  have  written  "  The  Raven  "  in  youth. 
It  exhibits  a  method  so  positive  as  almost  to  compel  us 
to  accept,  against  the  denial  of  his  associates,  his  own 
account  of  its  building.  The  maker  does  keep  a  firm 
hand  on  it  throughout,  and  for  once  seems  to  set 
his  purpose  above  his  passion.  This  appears  in  the 
gravely  quaint  diction,  and  in  the  contrast  between 
the  reality  of  every-day  manners  and  the  profounder 
reality  of  a  spiritual  shadow  upon  the  human  heart. 
The  grimness  of  fate  is  suggested  by  phrases  which  it 
requires  a  masterly  hand  to  subdue  to  the  meaning  of 
16 


"  The 
Raven  and 
Other 
Poems^ 
1845. 


"The 
Raven.' " 


242 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 


"'Sir,'    said  I,    'or  madam,'"    "this   un- 
and  the  like,  sustain  the  air  of  grotesque- 


"  The  City 
in  the 


the  poem, 
gainly  fowl, 

ness,  and  become  a  foil  to  the  pathos,  an  approach 
to  the  tragical  climax,  of  this  unique  production.  Only 
genius  can  deal  so  closely  with  the  grotesque,  and 
make  it  add  to  the  solemn  beauty  of  structure  an  effect 
like  that  of  the  gargoyles  seen  by  moonlight  on  the 
facade  of  Notre  Dame. 

In  no  other  lyric  is  Poe  so  self-possessed.  No  other 
is  so  determinate  in  its  repetends  and  alliterations. 
Hence  I  am  far  from  deeming  it  his  most  poetical  poem. 
Its  artificial  qualities  are  those  which  catch  the  fancy 
of  the  general  reader ;  and  it  is  of  all  his  ballads,  if  not 
the  most  imaginative,  the  most  peculiar.  His  more 
ethereal  productions  seem  to  me  those  in  which  there 
is  the  appearance,  at  least,  of  spontaneity,  —  in  which 
he  yields  to  his  feelings,  while  dying  falls  and  cadences 
most  musical,  most  melancholy,  come  from  him  una- 
wares. Literal  criticisms  of  "  The  Raven  "  are  of  small 
account.  If  the  shadow  of  the  bird  could  not  fall  upon 
the  mourner,  the  shadows  of  its  evil  presence  could 
brood  upon  his  soul  j  the  seraphim  whose  footfalls 
tinkle  upon  the  tufted  floor  may  be  regarded  as  sera- 
phim of  the  Orient,  their  anklets  hung  with  celestial 
bells.  At  all  events,  Poe's  raven  is  the  very  genius  of 
the  Night's  Plutonian  shore,  different  from  other  ra- 
vens, entirely  his  own,  and  none  other  can  take  its 
place.  It  is  an  emblem  of  the  Irreparable,  the  guar- 
dian of  pitiless  memories,  whose  burden  ever  recalls  to 
us  the  days  that  are  no  more. 

As  a  new  creation,  then,  "  The  Raven  "  is  entitled 
to  a  place  in  literature,  and  keeps  it.  But  how  much 
more  imaginative  is  such  a  poem  as  "  The  City  in  the 
Sea "  !  As  a  picture,  this  reminds  us  of  Turner,  and, 
again,  of  that  sublime  madman,  John  Martin.     Here 


MYSTIC  MELODY. 


243 


is  a  strange  city  where  Death  has  raised  a  throne. 
Its 

"shrines  and  palaces  and  towers 

(Time-eaten  towers  that  tremble  not  1) 

Resemble  nothing  that  is  ours. 

Around,  by  lifting  winds  forgot, 

Resignedly  beneath  the  sky 

The  melancholy  waters  lie." 

This  mystical  town  is  aglow  with  light,  not  from 
heaven,  but  from  out  the  lurid  sea,  —  light  which 
streams  up  the  turrets  and  pinnacles  and  domes, — 

"  Up  many  and  many  a  marvellous  shrine, 
Whose  wreathed  friezes  intertwine 
The  viol,  the  violet,  and  the  vine. 

While,  from  a  proud  tower  in  the  town, 
Death  looks  gigantically  down." 

The  sea  about  is  hideously  serene,  but  at  last  there 
is  a  movement  \  the  towers  seem  slightly  to  sink ;  the 
dull  tide  has  a  redder  glow, — 

"And  when,  amid  no  earthly  moans, 

Down,  down  that  town  shall  settle  hence, 
Hell,  rising  from  a  thousand  thrones, 
Shall  do  it  reverence." 

This  poem,  notwithstanding  its  sombreness  and  ter- 
ror, depends  upon  effects  which  made  Poe  the  fore- 
runner of  our  chief  experts  in  form  and  sound,  and 
both  the  language  and  the  conception  are  suggestive 
in  a  high  degree. 

"The  Sleeper"  is  even  more  poetic.  It  distills, 
like  drops  from  the  opiate  vapor  of  the  swooning 
moonlit  night,  all  the  melody,  the  fantasy,  the  exalta- 
tion, that  befit  the  vision  of  a  beautiful  woman  lying 
in  her  shroud,  silent  in  her  length  of  tress,  waiting 
to  exchange  her  death  chamber 


"Tk* 
SUefier." 


244 


EDGAR  ALLAN  FOE. 


"for  one  more  holy, 
This  bed,  for  one  more  melancholy." 

Poe's  ideality  cannot  be  gainsaid,  but  it  aided  him 
with  few,  very  few,  images,  and  those  seemed  to 
haunt  his  brain  perpetually.  Such  an  image  is  that 
of  the  beings  who  lend  their  menace  to  the  tone  of 
the  funeral  bells  :  — 

"  And  the  people,  —  ah,  the  people,  — 
They  that  dwell  up  in  the  steeple 

All  alone, 
And  who,  tolling,  tolling,  tolling, 

In  that  muffled  monotone, 
Feel  a  glory  in  so  rolling 

On  the  human  heart  a  stone,  — 
They  are  neither  man  nor  woman, 
They  are  neither  brute  nor  human, 
They  are  Ghouls." 

In  the  same  remarkable  fantasia  the  bells  themselves 
become  human,  and  it  is  a  master-stroke  that  makes 
us  hear  them  shriek  out  of  tune, 

"  In  a  clamorous  appealing  to  the  mercy  of  the  fire," 

and  forces  us  to  the  very  madness  with  which  they 
are 

"Leaping  higher,  higher,  higher, 
With  a  desperate  desire, 
And  a  resolute  endeavor 
Now  —  now  to  sit,  or  never, 
By  the  side  of  the  pale-faced  moon." 

Clearly  this  extravagance  was  suggested  by  the  pic- 
ture and  the  rhyme.  But  it  so  carries  us  with  it 
that  we  think  not  of  its  meaning;  we  share  in  the 
delirium  of  the  bells,  and  nothing  can  be  too  ex- 
treme for  the  abandon  to  which  we  yield  ourselves, 
led  by  the  faith  and  frenzy  of  the  poet. 

The  hinting,   intermittent  qualities   of   a  few  lyrics 


THE  REFRAIN  AND  REPETEND. 


245 


remind  us  of  Shelley  and  Coleridge,  with  whom  Poe 
always  was  in  sympathy.  The  conception  of  "The 
Raven "  was  new,  but  in  method  it  bears  a  likeness 
to  "  Lady  Geraldine's  Courtship,"  so  closely,  in  fact, 
that  the  rhythm  of  the  one  probably  was  suggested 
by  that  of  the  other.  In  motive  they  are  so  different 
that  neither  Poe  nor  Mrs.  Browning  could  feel  ag- 
grieved. After  an  examination  of  dates,  and  of  other 
matters  relating  to  the  genesis  of  each  poem,  I  have 
satisfied  myself,  against  much  reasoning  to  the  con- 
trary, that  Poe  derived  his  use  of  the  refrain  and 
repetend,  here  and  elsewhere,  from  the  English  sibyl, 
by  whom  they  were  employed  to  the  verge  of  man- 
nerism in  her  earliest  lyrics. 

"The  Conqueror  Worm"  expresses  in  a  single 
moan  the  hopelessness  of  the  poet's  vigils  among  the 
tombs,  where  he  demanded  of  silence  and  the  night 
some  tidings  of  the  dead.     All  he  knew  was  that 

"No  voice  from  that  sublimer  world  hath  ever 
To  sage  or  poet  these  responses  given." 

The  most  he  dared  to  ask  for  "The  Sleeper"  was 
oblivion ;  that  her  sleep  might  be  as  deep  as  it  was 
lasting.  We  lay  the  dead  "  in  the  cold  ground  "  or  in 
the  warm,  flower-springing  bosom  of  dear  Earth,  as 
best  may  fit  the  hearts  of  those  who  mourn  them. 
But  the  tomb,  the  end  of  mortality,  is  voiceless  still. 
If  you  would  find  the  beginning  of  immortality,  seek 
some  other  oracle.  "The  Conqueror  Worm"  is  the 
most  despairing  of  lyrics,  yet  quite  essential  to  the 
mystical  purpose  of  the  tale  "  Ligeia."  But  to  brood 
upon  men  as  mimes,  ironically  cast  "  in  the  form  of 
God  on  high,"  —  mere  puppets,  where 

"the  play  is  the  tragedy,  'Man/ 
And  its  hero  the  Conqueror  Worm," 


Use  of  the 
refrain 
and  repe- 
tend, by 
Mrs. 

Browning 
and  by 
Poe.     Cp. 
"  Victori- 
an roets": 
p.  145. 


"  The  Con- 


queror 
Worm: 


24-6 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 


Requiems. 


Art's 
strong- 
compul- 
sion. 


"Ula- 
Jume." 


—  that  way  madness  lies,  indeed.  In  the  lyric,  "  For 
Annie/'  death  is  a  trance  ;  the  soul  lingers,  calm  and 
at  rest,  for  the  fever,  called  living,  is  conquered. 
Human  love  remains,  and  its  last  kiss  is  still  a  balm. 
Something  may  be  hereafter,  —  but  what,  who  knows  ? 
For  repose,  and  for  delicate  and  unstudied  melody,  it 
is  one  of  Poe's  truest  poems,  and  his  tenderest.  Dur- 
ing the  brief  period  in  which  he  survived  his  wife,  he 
seemed  to  have  a  vision  of  rest  in  death,  and  not  of 
horror.  Two  lyrics,  widely  different,  and  one  of  them 
of  a  most  singular  nature,  are  thought  to  be  requiems 
for  his  lost  companion.  It  is  from  no  baseness,  but 
from  a  divine  instinct,  that  genuine  artists  are  com- 
pelled to  go  on  with  their  work  and  to  make  their 
own  misery,  no  less  than  their  joy,  promote  its  uses. 
Their  most  sacred  experiences  become,  not  of  their 
volition,  its  themes  and  illustrations.  Every  man  as 
an  individual  is  secondary  to  what  he  is  as  a  worker 
for  the  progress  of  his  kind  and  the  glory  of  the  gift 
allotted  to  him. 

Therefore,  whether  Poe  adored  his  wife  or  not,  her 
image  became  the  ideal  of  these  poems.  I  shall  add 
little  here  to  all  that  has  been  written  of  "  Ulalume. ■ 
It  is  so  strange,  so  unlike  anything  that  preceded  it, 
so  vague  and  yet  so  full  of  meaning,  that  of  itself  it 
might  establish  a  new  method.  To  me  it  seems  an 
improvisation,  such  as  a  violinist  might  play  upon  the 
instrument  which  had  become  his  one  thing  of  worth 
after  the  death  of  a  companion  had  left  him  alone 
with  his  own  soul.  Poe  remodelled  and  made  the 
most  of  his  first  broken  draft,  and  had  the  grace  not 
to  analyze  the  process.  I  have  accepted  his  analysis 
of  "  The  Raven  "  as  more  than  half  true.  Poets  know 
that  an  entire  poem  often  is  suggested  by  one  of  its 
lines,  even  by  a  refrain  or  a  bit  of  rhythm.     From  this 


HIS  HIGHER  POETIC  RANGE. 


247 


it  builds  itself.  The  last  or  any  other  stanza  may  be 
written  first ;  and  what  at  first  is  without  form  is  not 
void, —  for  ultimately  it  will  be  perfected  into  shape 
and  meaning.  If  "  Ulalume  "  may  be  termed  a  re- 
quiem, "Annabel  Lee"  is  a  tuneful  dirge, —the  sim- 
plest of  Poe's  melodies,  and  the  most  likely  to  please 
the  common  ear.  It  is  said  to  have  been  his  last 
lyric,  and  was  written,  I  think,  with  more  spontaneity 
than  others.  The  theme  is  carried  along  skilfully, 
the  movement  hastened  and  heightened  to  the  end 
and  there  dwelt  upon,  as  often  in  a  piece  of  music. 
Before  considering  the  poet's  method  of  song,  I  will 
mention  the  two  poems  which  seem  to  me  to  repre- 
sent his  highest  range,  and  sufficient  in  themselves  to 
preserve  the  memory  of  a  lyrist. 

We   overlook  the  allegory   of    "The  Haunted   Pal- 
until   it    has   been    read  more  than    once  j   we 


ace, 


"Annabel 
Lee." 


Foe's 
highest 
lyrical 
range. 


"  The 

Haunted 

Palace." 


think  of  the  sound,  the  phantasmagoric  picture,  the 
beauty,  the  lurid  close.  The  magic  muse  of  Cole- 
ridge, in  "Kubla  Khan,"  or  elsewhere,  hardly  went 
beyond  such  lines  as  these  :  — 

"Banners  yellow,  glorious,  golden, 

On  its  roof  did  float  and  flow, 
(This  — all  this— was  in  the  olden 

Time  long  ago  ; ) 
And  every  gentle  air  that  dallied, 

In  that  sweet  day, 
Along  the  ramparts,  plumed  and  pallid, 

A  winged  odor  went  away." 

The  conception  of  a  "  Lost  Mind  "  never  has  been  so 
imaginatively  treated,  whether  by  poet  or  by  painter. 
Questioning  Poe's  own  mental  state,  look  at  this  poem 
and  see  how  sane,  as  an  artist,  he  was  that  made  it. 
"  Do  you  act  best  when  you  forget  yourself  in  the 
part  ?  "     "  No,  for  then  I  forget  to  perfect  the  part." 


248 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 


"IsrafeV 


A  n  exqui- 
site but  lim- 
itedfac- 
ulty. 


Even  more  striking  is  the  song  of  "  Israfel,"  whose 
heart-strings  are  a  lute.  Of  all  these  lyrics  is  not 
this  the  most  lyrical,  —  not  only  charged  with  music, 
but  with  light?  For  once,  and  in  his  freest  hour  of 
youth,  Poe  got  above  the  sepulchres  and  mists,  even 
beyond  the  pale-faced  moon,  and  visited  the  empyrean. 
There  is  joy  in  this  carol,  and  the  radiance  of  the 
skies,  and  ecstatic  possession  of  the  gift  of  song :  — 

"  If  I  could  dwell 
Where  Israfel 

Hath  dwelt,  and  he  where  I, 
He  might  not  sing  so  wildly  well 

A  mortal  melody, 
While  a  bolder  note  than  this  might  swell 

From  my  lyre  within  the  sky ! " 

All  this,  with  the  rapturous  harmony  of  the  first  and 
third  stanzas,  is  awakened  in  the  poet's  soul  by  a 
line  from  a  discourse  on  the  Koran,  and  the  result  is 
even  finer  than  the  theme.  If  I  had  any  claim  to 
make  up  a  "Parnassus,"  not  perhaps  of  the  most 
famous  English  lyrics,  but  of  those  which  appeal 
strongly  to  my  own  poetic  sense,  and  could  select 
but  one  of  Poe's,  I  confess  that  I  should  choose 
"Israfel,"  for  pure  music,  for  exaltation,  and  for  its 
original,  satisfying  quality  of  rhythmic  art. 


IV. 

Few  and  brief  are  these  reliquice  which  determine 
his  fame  as  a  poet.  What  do  they  tell  us  of  his 
lyrical  genius  and  method?  Clearly  enough,  that  he 
possessed  an  exquisite  faculty,  which  he  exercised 
within  definite  bounds.  It  may  be  that  within  those 
bounds  he  would  have  done  more  if  events  had  not 
hindered  him,  as  he  declared,   "  from  making  any  se- 


'RHYTHMICAL   CREATION  OF  BEAUTY.' 


249 


rious  effort"  in  the  field  of  his  choice.  In  boyhood 
he  had  decided  views  as  to  the  province  of  song,  and 
he  never  afterward  changed  them.  The  preface  to 
his  West  Point  edition,  rambling  and  conceited  as  it 
is,  —  affording  such  a  contrast  to  the  proud  humility 
of  Keats's  preface  to  "  Endymion,"  —  gives  us  the 
gist  of  his  creed,  and  shows  that  the  instinct  of  the 
young  poet  was  scarcely  less  delicate  than  that  of  his 
nobler  kinsman.  Poe  thought  the  object  of  poetry 
was  pleasure,  not  truth ;  the  pleasure  must  not  be 
definite,  but  subtile,  and  therefore  poetry  is  opposed 
to  romance  ;  music  is  an  essential,  "  since  the  compre- 
hension of  sweet  sound  is  our  most  indefinite  concep- 
tion." Metaphysics  in  verse  he  hated,  pronouncing 
the  Lake  theory  a  new  form  of  didacticism  that  had 
injured  even  the  tuneful  Coleridge.  For  a  neophyte 
this  was  not  bad,  and  after  certain  reservations  few 
will  disagree  with  him.  Eighteen  years  later,  in  his 
charming  lecture,  "The  Poetic  Principle,"  he  offered 
simply  an  extension  of  these  ideas,  with  reasons  why 
a  long  poem  "  cannot  exist."  One  is  tempted  to  re- 
join that  the  standard  of  length  in  a  poem,  as  in  a 
piece  of  music,  is  relative,  depending  upon  the  power 
of  the  maker  and  the  recipient  to  prolong  their  ex- 
alted moods.  We  might,  also,  quote  Landor's  "  Pen- 
tameron,"  concerning  the  greatness  of  a  poet,  or  even 
Beecher's  saying  that  "  pint  measures  are  soon  filled." 
The  lecture  justly  denounces  the  "heresy  of  the  didac- 
tic," and  then  declares  poetry  to  be  the  child  of  Taste, 
—  devoted  solely  to  the  Rhythmical  Creation  of 
Beauty,  as  it  is  in  music  that  the  soul  most  nearly 
attains  the  supernal  end  for  which  it  struggles.  In 
fine,  Poe,  with  "  the  mad  pride  of  intellectuality,"  re- 
fused to  look  beyond  the  scope  of  his  own  gift,  and 
would  restrict  the  poet  to  one  method  and  even  to  a 


Foe's 
theory  0/ 
poetry. 


Cp.  u  Vic- 
torian 
Poets'*  : 
p.  127. 


"The 
Poetic 
Principle? 
1845- 


The 

Rhythmi- 
cal Crea- 
tion 0/ 
Beauty. 


250 


EDGAR  ALLAN  FOE. 


A  melo- 
dist. 


The  re- 
frain and 
repetend. 


single  theme.  In  his  ex  post  facto  analysis  of  "  The 
Raven"  he  conceives  the  highest  tone  of  beauty  to 
be  sadness,  caused  by  the  pathos  of  existence  and  our 
inability  to  grasp  the  unknown.  Of  all  beauty  that 
of  a  beautiful  woman  is  the  supremest,  her  death  is 
the  saddest  loss  —  and  therefore  "the  most  poetical 
topic  in  the  world."  He  would  treat  this  musically 
by  application  of  the  refrain,  increasing  the  sorrowful 
loveliness  of  his  poem  by  contrast  of  something  home- 
ly, fantastic,  or  quaint. 

Poe's  own  range  was  quite  within  his  theory.  His 
juvenile  versions  of  what  afterward  became  poems  were 
so  very  "  indefinite "  as  to  express  almost  nothing  ; 
they  resembled  those  marvellous  stanzas  of  Dr.  driv- 
ers, that  sound  magnificently,  —  I  have  heard  Bayard 
Taylor  and  Swinburne  rehearse  them  with  shouts  of 
delight  —  and  that  have  no  meaning  at  all.  Poe  could 
not  remain  a  Chivers,  but  sound  always  was  his  forte. 
We  rarely  find  his  highest  imagination  in  his  verse,  or 
the  creation  of  poetic  phrases  such  as  came  to  the  lips 
of  Keats  without  a  summons.  He  lacked  the  dramatic 
power  of  combination,  and  produced  no  symphony  in 
rhythm,  — was  strictly  a  melodist,  who  achieved  won- 
ders in  a  single  strain.  Neither  Mrs.  Browning  nor  any 
other  poet  had  "  applied  "  the  refrain  in  Poe's  fashion, 
nor  so  effectively.  In  "  The  Bells  "  its  use  is  limited 
almost  to  one  word,  the  only  English  word,  perhaps, 
that  could  be  repeated  incessantly  as  the  burden  of 
such  a  poem.  In  "  The  Raven,"  "  Lenore,"  and  else- 
where, he  employed  the  repetend  also,  and  with  still 
more  novel  results  :  — 

"An  anthem  for  the  queenliest  dead  that  ever  died  so  young, 
A  dirge  for  her,  the  doubly  dead,  in  that  she  died  so  young." 

"Our  talk  had  been  serious  and  sober, 


A    POET  OE  ONE  MOOD. 


251 


But  our  thoughts  they  were  palsied  and  sere, 
Our  memories  were  treacherous  and  sere." 

One  thing  profitably  may  be  noted  by  latter-day 
poets.  Poe  used  none  but  elementary  English  meas- 
ures, relying  upon  his  music  and  atmosphere  for  their 
effect.  This  is  true  of  those  which  seem  most  intri- 
cate, as  in  "The  Bells"  and  "Ulalume."  "  Lenore  " 
and  "  For  Annie  "  are  the  simplest  of  ballad  forms. 
I  have  a  fancy  that  our  Southern  poet's  ear  caught 
the  music  of  "  Annabel  Lee "  and  "  Eulalie,"  if  not 
their  special  quality,  from  the  plaintive,  melodious 
negro  songs  utilized  by  those  early  writers  of  "  min- 
strelsy" who  have  been  denominated  the  only  com- 
posers of  a  genuine  American  school.  This  sugges- 
tion may  be  scouted,  but  an  expert  might  suspect  the 
one  to  be  a  patrician  refinement  upon  the  melody, 
feeling,  and  humble  charm  of  the  other. 

Poe  was  not  a  single-poem  poet,  but  the  poet  of  a 
single  mood.  His  materials  were  seemingly  a  small 
stock  in  trade,  chiefly  of  Angels  and  Demons,  with  an 
attendance  of  Dreams,  Echoes,  Ghouls,  Gnomes  and 
Mimes,  ready  at  hand.  He  selected  or  coined,  for  use 
and  re-use,  a  number  of  what  have  been  called  "  beau- 
tiful words,"  —  " albatross,"  "halcyon,"  " scintillant," 
"Ligeia,"  "Weir,"  "Yaanek,"  "  Auber,"  "  D'Elormie," 
and  the  like.  Everything  was  subordinate  to  sound. 
But  his  poetry,  as  it  places  us  under  the  spell  of  the 
senses,  enables  us  to  enter,  through  their  reaction  upon 
the  spirit,  his  indefinable  mood  ;  nor  should  we  forget 
that  Coleridge  owes  his  specific  rank  as  a  poet,  not 
to  his  philosophic  verse,  but  to  melodious  fragments, 
and  greatly  to  the  rhythm  of  "  The  Ancient  Mariner " 
and  of  "  Christabel."  Poe's  melodies  lure  us  to  the 
point  where  we  seem  to  hear  angelic  lutes  and  cith- 
erns, or  elfin  instruments  that   make  music   in  "  the 


Useqf 
sim/>le  bal- 
lad/onus. 


252 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 


Poe  most 
emittent 
as  a  ro- 
mancer. 


Revolt 
against  the 
common- 
place. 


land  east  of  the  sun  and  west  of  the  moon."  The 
enchantment  may  not  be  that  of  Israfel,  nor  of  the 
harper  who  exorcised  the  evil  genius  of  Saul,  but  it  is 
at  least  that  of  some  plumed  being  of  the  middle  air, 
of  a  charmer  charming  so  sweetly  that  his  numbers 
are  the  burden  of  mystic  dreams. 


If  Poe's  standing  depended  chiefly  upon  these  few 
poems,  notable  as  they  are,  his  name  would  be  re- 
called less  frequently.  His  intellectual  strength  and 
rarest  imagination  are  to  be  found  in  his  Tales.  To 
them,  and  to  literary  criticism,  his  main  labors  were 
devoted. 

The  limits  of  this  chapter  constrain  me  to  say  less 
than  I  have  in  mind  concerning  his  prose  writings. 
As  with  his  poems,  so  with  the  "  Tales,"  —  their  dates 
are  of  little  importance.  His  irregular  life  forced  him 
to  alternate  good  work  with  bad,  and  some  of  his  best 
stories  were  written  early.  He  was  an  apostle  of  the 
art  that  refuses  to  take  its  color  from  a  given  time  or 
country,  and  of  the  revolt  against  commonplace,  and 
his  inventions  partook  of  the  romantic  and  the  won- 
derful. He  added  to  a  Greek  perception  of  form  the 
Oriental  passion  for  decoration.  All  the  materials  of 
the  wizard's  craft  were  at  his  command.  He  was  not 
a  pupil  of  Beckford,  Godwin,  Maturin,  Hoffman,  or 
Fouqu6 ;  and  yet  if  these  writers  were  to  be  grouped 
we  should  think  also  of  Poe,  and  give  him  no  second 
place  among  them.  "  The  young  fellow  is  highly  imag- 
inative, and  a  little  given  to  the  terrific, "  said  Ken- 
nedy, in  his  honest  way.  Poe  could  not  have  written 
a  novel,  as  we  term  it,  as  well  as  the  feeblest  of  Har- 
per's or  Roberts's  yearlings.     He  vibrated  between  two 


INTELLECTUAL   DEXTERITY. 


253 


points,  the  realistic  and  the  mystic,  and  made  no  at- 
tempt to  combine  people  or  situations  in  ordinary  life, 
though  he  knew  how  to  lead  up  to  a  dramatic  tableau 
or  crisis.  His  studies  of  character  were  not  made 
from  observation,  but  from  acquaintance  with  himself; 
and  this  subjectivity,  or  egoism,  crippled  his  inven- 
tion and  made  his  "  Tales  "  little  better  than  prose 
poems.  He  could  imagine  a  series  of  adventures  — 
the  experience  of  a  single  narrator  —  like  "  Arthur 
Gordon  Pym,"  and  might  have  been,  not  Le  Sage  nor 
De  Foe,  but  an  eminent  raconteur  in  his  own  field. 
His  strength  is  unquestionable  in  those  clever  pieces 
of  ratiocination,  "The  Murders  in  the  Rue  Morgue," 
"  The  Mystery  of  Marie  Roget,"  "  The  Purloined  Let- 
ter"; in  some  of  a  more  fantastic  type,  "The  Gold 
Bug  "  and  "  Hans  Pfaall "  ;  and  especially  in  those  with 
elements  of  terror  and  morbid  psychology  added,  such 
as  "The  Descent  into  the  Maelstrom,"  "The  Black 
Cat,"  "The  Tell-tale  Heart,"  and  the  mesmeric 
sketches.  When  composing  these  he  delighted  in  the 
exercise  of  his  dexterous  intellect,  like  a  workman 
testing  his  skill.  No  poet  is  of  a  low  grade  who  pos- 
sesses, besides  an  ear  for  rhythm,  the  resources  of 
a  brain  so  fine  and  active.  Technical  gifts  being 
equal,  the  more  intellectual  of  two  poets  is  the  greater. 
"Best  bard,  because  the  wisest." 

His  artistic  contempt  for  metaphysics  is  seen  even 
in  those  tales  which  appear  most  transcendental. 
They  are  charged  with  a  feeling  that  in  the  realms 
of  psychology  we  are  dealing  with  something  ethereal, 
which  is  none  the  less  substance  if  we  might  but  cap- 
ture it.  They  are  his  resolute  attempts  to  find  a  clew 
to  the  invisible  world.  Were  he  living  now,  how  much 
he  would  make  of  our  discoveries  in  light  and  sound, 
of  the  correlation  of  forces  I     He  strove  by  a  kind  of 


Realism 
and  mysti- 
cism. 


Psycho- 
logic anal- 
ysis. 


Contempt 
for  meta- 
physics. 


254 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 


Master- 
pieces. 


Pot  and 
Haw- 
thorne. 


divination  to  put  his  hand  upon  the  links  of  mind 
and  matter,  and  reach  the  hiding-places  of  the  soul. 
It  galled  him  that  anything  should  lie  outside  the  do- 
main of  human  intelligence.  His  imperious  intellect 
rebelled  against  the  bounds  that  shut  us  in,  and  found 
passionate  expression  in  works  of  which  "  Ligeia," 
"The  Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher,"  and  "William 
Wilson  "  are  the  best  types.  The  tales  in  which  lyrics 
are  introduced  are  full  of  complex  beauty,  the  choicest 
products  of  his  genius.  They  are  the  offspring  of 
yearnings  that  lifted  him  so  far  above  himself  as  to 
make  us  forget  his  failings  and  think  of  him  only  as 
a  creative  artist,  a  man  of  noble  gifts. 

In  these  short,  purely  ideal  efforts  —  finished  as  an 
artist  finishes  a  portrait,  or  a  poet  his  poem —  Poe  had 
few  equals  in  recent  times.  That  he  lacked  sustained 
power  of  invention  is  proved,  not  by  his  failure  to  com- 
plete an  extended  work,  but  by  his  under-estimation  of 
its  value.  Such  a  man  measures  everything  by  his  per- 
sonal ability,  and  finds  plausible  grounds  for  the  re- 
sulting standard.  Hawthorne  had  the  growing  power 
and  the  staying  power  that  gave  us  "The  Scarlet 
Letter  "  and  "  The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables."  Poe 
and  Hawthorne  were  the  last  of  the  romancers.  Each 
was  a  master  in  his  way,  and  that  of  Poe  was  the 
more  obvious  and  material.  He  was  expert  in  much 
that  concerns  the  structure  of  works,  and  the  model- 
ling touches  of  the  poet  left  beauty-marks  upon  his 
prose.  Yet  in  spiritual  meaning  his  tales  were  less 
poetic  than  those  of  Hawthorne.  He  relied  upon  his 
externals,  making  the  utmost  of  their  gorgeousness  of 
color,  their  splendor  and  gloom  of  light  and  shade. 
Hawthorne  found  the  secret  meaning  of  common  things, 
and  knew  how  to  capture,  from  the  plainest  aspects  of 
life,  an  essence  of  evasive  beauty  which  the  senses  of 


COMPARED    WITH  HA  WTHORNE. 


CREESE  £to£>v 

V*.  ^*> 


Poe  often  were  unable  to  perceive.  It  was  Hawthorne 
who  heard  the  melodies  too  fine  for  mortal  ear.  Haw- 
thorne was  wholly  masculine,  with  the  great  tenderness 
and  gentleness  which  belong  to  virile  souls.  Poe  had, 
with  the  delicacy,  the  sophistry  and  weakness  of  a 
nature  more  or  less  effeminate.  He  opposed  to  Haw- 
thorne the  fire,  the  richness,  the  instability  of  the  trop- 
ics, as  against  the  abiding  strength  and  passion  of  the 
North.  His  own  conceptions  astonished  him,  and  he 
often  presents  himself  "  with  hair  on  end,  at  his  own 
wonders."  Of  these  two  artists  and  seers,  the  New 
Englander  had  the  profounder  insight ;  the  South- 
erner's magic  was  that  of  the  necromancer  who  re- 
sorts to  spells  and  devices,  and,  when  some  apparition 
by  chance  responds  to  his  incantations,  is  bewildered 
by  the  phantom  himself  has  raised. 

Poe  failed  to  see  that  the  Puritanism  by  which  Haw- 
thorne's strength  was  tempered  was  also  the  source 
from  which  it  sprang  j  and  in  his  general  criticism  did 
not  pay  full  tribute  to  a  genius  he  must  have  felt.  In 
some  of  his  sketches,  such  as  "  The  Man  of  the 
Crowd,"  he  used  Hawthorne's  method,  and  with  infe- 
rior results.  His  reviews  of  other  authors  and  his 
occasional  literary  notes  have  been  so  carefully  pre- 
served as  to  show  his  nature  by  a  mental  and  moral 
photograph.  His  Marginalia,  scrappy  and  written  for 
effect,  are  the  notes  of  a  thinking  man  of  letters.  The 
criticisms  raised  a  hubbub  in  their  day,  and  made  Poe 
the  bogy  of  his  generation  —  the  unruly  censor  whom 
weaklings  not  only  had  cause  to  fear,  but  often  re- 
garded with  a  sense  of  cruel  injustice.  I  acknowledge 
their  frequent  dishonesty,  vulgarity,  prejudice,  but  do 
not,  therefore,  hold  them  to  be  worthless.  Even  a 
scourge,  a  pestilence,  has  its  uses ;  before  it  the  puny 
and  frail  go  down,  the  fittest  survive.     And  so  it  was  in 


256 


EDGAR  ALLAN  FOE. 


"  The  Lit- 
erati,'1'' 
1846. 


Poe's  foray.  Better  that  a  time  of  unproductiveness 
should  follow  such  a  thinning  out  than  that  false  and 
feeble  things  should  continue.  I  suspect  that  The 
Literati  made  room  for  a  new  movement,  sure  though 
long  delayed,  in  American  authorship.  Mr.  Higgin- 
son,  however,  is  entirely  right  when  he  intimates  that 
Margaret  Fuller,  by  her  independent  reviews  in  "  The 
Tribune,"  sustained  her  full  and  early  part  in  the 
chase  against  "  such  small  deer."  The  shafts  of  Dian 
were  more  surely  sped,  and  much  less  vindictively,  than 
the  spear  of  her  brother-huntsman.  Poe's  sketches  are 
a  prose  Dunciad,  waspish  and  unfair,  yet  not  without 
touches  of  magnanimity.  He  had  small  respect  for  the 
feeling  that  it  is  well  for  a  critic  to  discover  beauties, 
since  any  one  can  point  out  faults.  When,  as  in  the 
cases  of  Tennyson,  Mrs.  Browning,  Taylor,  and  others, 
he  pronounced  favorably  upon  the  talents  of  a  claim- 
ant, and  was  uninfluenced  by  personal  motives,  his 
judgments  not  seldom  have  been  justified  by  the  after- 
career.  Besides,  what  a  cartoon  he  drew  of  the  writers 
of  his  time,  —  the  corrective  of  Griswold's  optimistic 
delineations !  In  the  description  of  a  man's  personal 
appearance  he  had  the  art  of  placing  the  subject  before 
us  with  a  single  touch.  His  tender  mercies  were  cruel ; 
he  never  forgot  to  prod  the  one  sore  spot  of  the  author 
he  most  approved,  —  was  especially  intolerant  of  his 
own  faults  in  others,  and  naturally  detected  these  at 
once.  When  meting  out  punishment  to  a  pretentious 
writer,  he  revelled  in  his  task,  and  often  made  short 
work,  as  if  the  pleasure  was  too  great  to  be  endurable. 
The  keenness  of  his  satire,  just  or  unjust,  is  mitigated 
by  its  obvious  ferocity:  one  instinctively  takes  part 
with  the  victim.  Nothing  in  journalistic  criticism,  even 
at  that  time,  was  more  scathing  and  ludicrous  than  his 
conceit  of  a  popular  bookwright  in  the  act  of  confabu- 


GENERAL    TRAITS  AND  EQUIPMENT. 


257 


lation  with  the  Universe.  But  he  marred  the  work  by 
coarseness,  telling  one  man  that  he  was  by  no  means  a 
fool,  although  he  did  write  "  De  Vere,"  and  heading  a 
paper  on  the  gentlest  and  most  forbearing  of  poets  — 
"  Mr.  Longfellow  and  other  Plagiarists."  In  short,  he 
constantly  dulled  the  edge  and  temper  of  his  rapier, 
and  resorted  to  the  broad-axe,  using  the  latter  even  in 
his  deprecation  of  its  use  by  Kit  North.  Perhaps  it 
was  needed  in  those  salad  days  by  offenders  who  could 
be  put  down  in  no  other  wise ;  but  I  hold  it  a  sign  of 
progress  that  criticism  by  force  of  arms  would  now  be 
less  effective. 

VI. 

Some  analysis  of  Poe's  general  equipment  will  not 
be  out  of  place.  Only  in  the  most  perfect  tales  can 
his  English  style  be  called  excellent,  however  signifi- 
cant his  thought.  His  mannerisms  —  constant  employ- 
ment of  the  dash  for  suggestiveness,  and  a  habit  of 
italicizing  to  make  a  point  or  strengthen  an  illusion  — 
are  wearisome,  and  betray  a  lack  of  confidence  in  his 
skill  to  use  plain  methods.  While  asserting  the  power 
of  words  to  convey  absolutely  any  idea  of  the  human 
mind,  he  relied  on  sound,  quaintness,  surprise,  and 
other  artificial  aids.  His  prose  is  inferior  to  Haw- 
thorne's j  but  sometimes  he  excels  Hawthorne  in  qual- 
ities of  form  and  proportion  which  are  specially  at 
the  service  of  authors  who  are  also  poets.  The  abrupt 
beginnings  of  his  stories  often  are  artistic:  — 

"We  had  now  reached  the  summit  of  the  loftiest  crag. 
For  some  minutes  the  old  man  seemed  too  much  exhausted 
to  speak."    ("  Descent  into  the  Maelstrom.") 

"  The  thousand  injuries  of  Fortunato  I  had  borne  as  best 
I  could;  but  when  he  ventured  upon  insult,  I  vowed  re- 
venge."   ("  The  Cask  of  Amontillado.") 


Broad- 
axe  criti- 
cism. 


Poe's 
equipment 
and 
genius. 


25^ 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 


"The 
Fall  of  the 
House  of 
Usher." 


Balzac. 


Poe^s  im- 
agination. 


Thefan- 
tastic. 


Deficient 
in  humor. 


His  endings  were  equally  good,  when  he  had  a  clear 
knowledge  of  his  own  purpose,  and  some  of  his  con- 
ceptions terminate  at  a  dramatic  crisis.  The  tone, 
also,  of  his  masterpieces  is  well  sustained  through- 
out. In  "The  Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher,"  the  ap- 
proach to  the  fated  spot,  the  air,  the  landscape,  the 
tarn,  the  mansion  itself,  are  a  perfect  study,  equal  to 
the  ride  of  Childe  Roland,  —  and  here  Poe  excels 
Browning:  we  not  only  come  with  him  to  the  dark 
tower,  but  we  enter  and  partake  its  mystery,  and  alone 
know  the  secret  of  its  accursed  fate.  The  poet's  ana- 
lytic faculty  has  been  compared  to  that  of  Balzac,  but 
a  parallel  goes  no  farther  than  the  material  side.  In 
condensation  he  surpassed  either  Balzac  or  Haw- 
thorne. 

His  imagination  was  not  of  the  highest  order,  for 
he  never  dared  to  trust  to  it  implicitly ;  certainly  not 
in  his  poetry,  since  he  could  do  nothing  with  a  meas- 
ure like  blank  verse,  which  is  barren  in  the  hands  of  a 
mere  songster,  but  the  glory  of  English  metrical  forms 
when  employed  by  one  commanding  the  strength  of 
diction,  the  beauty  and  grandeur  of  thought,  and  all 
the  resources  of  a  strongly  imaginative  poet.  Nei- 
ther in  verse  nor  in  prose  did  he  cut  loose  from  his 
minor  devices,  and  for  results  of  sublimity  and  awe  he 
always  depends  upon  that  which  is  grotesque  or  out 
of  nature.  Beauty  of  the  fantastic  or  grotesque  is  not 
the  highest  beauty.  Art,  like  nature,  must  be  fantas- 
tic, not  in  her  frequent,  but  in  her  exceptional  moods. 
The  rarest  ideal  dwells  in  a  realm  beyond  that  which 
fascinates  us  by  its  strangeness  or  terror,  and  the  vo- 
taries of  the  latter  have  masters  above  them  as  high 
as  Raphael  is  above  Dore. 

In  genuine  humor  Poe  seemed  utterly  wanting.     He 
also  had  little  of  the  mother-wit  that  comes  in  flashes 


COMMAND   OF  THE  GROTESQUE. 


259 


and  at  once;  but  his  powers  of  irony  and  satire  were 
so  great  as  to  make  his  frequent  lapses  into  invective 
the  more  humiliating.  The  command  of  humor  has 
distinguished  men  whose  genius  was  both  high  and 
broad.  If  inessential  to  exalted  poetic  work,  its  ab- 
sence is  hurtful  to  the  critical  and  polemic  essay.  Poe 
knew  this  as  well  as  any  one,  but  a  measureless  self- 
esteem  would  not  acknowledge  the  flaw  in  his  armor. 
Hence  efforts  which  involved  the  delusion  that  humor 
may  come  by  works  and  not  by  inborn  gift.  Humor 
is  congenital  and  rare,  the  fruit  of  natural  mellowness, 
of  sensitiveness  to  the  light  and  humane  phases  of  life. 
It  is,  moreover,  set  in  action  by  an  unselfish  heart. 
Such  is  the  mirth  of  Thackeray,  of  Cervantes  and  Mo- 
liere,  and  of  the  one  master  of  English  song.  Poe's 
consciousness  of  his  defect,  and  his  refusal  to  believe 
it  incurable,  are  manifest  in  trashy  sketches  for  which 
he  had  a  market,  and  which  are  humorous  only  to  one 
who  sees  the  ludicrous  side  of  their  failure.  He  ana- 
lyzed mirth  as  the  product  of  incongruity,  and  went 
to  work  upon  a  theory  to  produce  it.  The  result  is 
seen  not  only  in  the  extravaganzas  to  which  I  refer, 
—  and  it  is  a  pity  that  these  should  have  been  hunted 
up  so  laboriously,  —  but  in  the  use  of  what  he  thought 
was  humor  to  barb  his  criticisms,  and  as  a  contrast 
to  the  exciting  passages  of  his  analytical  tales.  One 
of  his  sketches,  "  The  Due  de  l'Omelette,"  after  the 
lighter  French  manner,  has  grace  and  jaunty  persiflage, 
but  most  of  his  whimsical  "  pot-boilers "  are  deplor- 
ably absurd.  There  is  something  akin  to  humor  in  the 
sub-handling  of  his  favorite  themes,  —  such  as  the  awe 
and  mystery  of  death,  the  terrors  of  pestilence,  insan- 
ity, or  remorse.  The  grotesque  and  nether  side  of 
these  matters  presents  itself  to  him,  and  then  his  irony, 
with  its  repulsive  fancies,  is  as  near  humor  as  he  ever 


Quality  of 
the  great 
humorists. 
Cfi.  "  Vic- 
torian 
Poets  "  : 
PP>  73»  77* 


The  gro- 
tesque. 


26o 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 


Character 
of  his 
scholar- 
ship. 


Affecta- 
tion of 
learning. 


A  good 
reference- 
knowledge. 


approaches.  That  is  to  say,  it  is  grave-yard  humor, 
the  kind  which  sends  a  chill  down  our  backs,  and 
implies  a  contempt  for  our  bodies  and  souls,  for  the 
perils,  helplessness,  and  meanness  of  the  stricken  hu- 
man race. 

Poe  is  sometimes  called  a  man  of  extraordinary 
learning.  Upon  a  first  acquaintance,  one  might  re- 
ceive the  impression  that  his  scholarship  was  not  only 
varied,  but  thorough.  A  study  of  his  works  has  satis- 
fied me  that  he  possessed  literary  resources  and  knew 
how  to  make  the  most  of  them.  In  this  he  resembled 
Bulwer,  and,  with  far  less  abundant  materials  than  the 
latter  required,  employed  them  as  speciously.  He 
easily  threw  a  glamour  of  erudition  about  his  work, 
by  the  use  of  phrases  from  old  authors  he  had  read, 
or  among  whose  treatises  he  had  foraged  with  special 
design.  It  was  his  knack  to  cull  sentences  which, 
taken  by  themselves,  produce  a  weird  or  impressive 
effect,  and  to  reframe  them  skilfully.  This  plan  was 
clever,  and  resulted  in  something  that  could  best  be 
muttered  "  darkly,  at  dead  of  night " ;  but  it  partook 
of  trickery,  even  in  its  art.  He  had  little  exact  schol- 
arship, nor  needed  it,  dealing,  as  he  did,  not  with  the 
processes  of  learning,  but  with  results  that  could  sub- 
serve the  play  of  his  imagination.  Shakespeare's 
anachronisms  and  illusions  were  made  as  he  required 
them,  and  with  a  fine  disdain.  Poe  resorted  to  them 
of  malice  aforethought,  and  under  pretence  of  correct- 
ness. Still,  the  work  of  a  romancer  and  poet  is  not 
that  of  a  book-worm.  What  he  needs  is  a  good  ref- 
erence-knowledge, and  this  Poe  had.  His  irregular 
school-boy  training  was  not  likely  to  give  him  the 
scholastic  habit,  nor  would  his  impatient  manhood 
otherwise  have  confirmed  it.  I  am  sure  that  we  may 
consider  that  portion  of   his   youth  to  have   been   of 


ROMANTIC  MATERIALS. 


26l 


most  worth  which  was  devoted,  as  in  the  case  of  many 
a  born  writer,  to  the  unconscious  education  obtained 
from  the  reading,  for  the  mere  love  of  it,  of  all  books 
to  which  he  had  access.  This  training  served  him 
well.  It  enabled  him  to  give  his  romance  an  alchemic 
air,  by  citation  from  writers  like  Chapman,  Thomas 
More,  Bishop  King,  etc.,  and  from  Latin  and  French 
authors  in  profusion.  His  French  tendencies  were 
natural,  and  he  learned  enough  of  the  language  to 
read  much  of  its  current  literature  and  get  hold  of 
modes  unknown  to  many  of  his  fellow-writers.  I  have 
said  that  his  stock  in  trade  was  narrow,  but  for  the 
adroit  display  of  it  examine  any  of  his  tales  and 
sketches,  —  for  example,  "Berenice,"  or  "The  Assig- 
nation." 

In  knowledge  of  what  may  be  called  the  properties 
of  his  romance,  he  was  more  honestly  grounded.  He 
had  the  good  fortune  to  utilize  the  Southern  life  and 
scenery  which  he  knew  in  youth.  It  chanced,  also, 
that  during  some  years  of  his  boyhood  —  that  forma- 
tive period  whose  impressions  are  indelible  —  he  lived 
in  a  characteristic  part  of  England.  He  had  seen 
with  his  own  eyes  castles,  abbeys,  the  hangings  and 
tapestries  and  other  by-gone  trappings  of  ancient 
rooms,  and  remembered  effects  of  decoration  and  color 
which  always  came  to  his  aid.  These  he  used  as  if 
he  were  born  to  them  ;  never,  certainly,  with  the  sur- 
prise at  their  richness  which  vulgarizes  Disraeli's  "  Lo- 
thair."  In  some  way,  known  to  genius,  he  also  caught 
the  romance  of  France,  of  Italy,  of  the  Orient,  and 
one  tale  or  another  is  transfused  with  their  atmos- 
phere ;  while  the  central  figure,  however  disguised,  is 
always  the  image  of  the  romancer  himself.  His  equip- 
ment, on  the  whole,  was  not  a  pedant's,  much  less  that 
of  a  searcher  after  truth ;  it  was  that  of  a  poet  and 


His  ma- 
terials. 


262 


EDGAR  ALLAN  FOE. 


"Eureka , 
a  Prose 
Poem," 
1848. 


A  lay- 
man's im- 
aginative 
venture. 
Cp.  "  Vic- 
torian 
Poets  "  : 
p/>.  19,  20. 


Poetic  in- 
duction. 


a  literary  workman.  Yet  he  had  the  hunger  which 
animates  the  imaginative  student,  and,  had  he  been 
led  to  devote  himself  to  science,  would  have  contrib- 
uted to  the  sum  of  knowledge.  In  writing  Eureka  he 
was  unquestionably  sincere,  and  forgot  himself  more 
nearly  than  in  any  other  act  of  his  professional  life. 
But  here  his  inexact  learning  betrayed  him.  What 
was  begun  in  conviction  —  a  swift  generalization  from 
scientific  theories  of  the  universe  —  grew  to  be  so  far 
beyond  the  data  at  his  command,  or  so  inconsistent 
with  them,  that  he  finally  saw  he  had  written  little 
else  than  a  prose  poem,  and  desired  that  it  should  be 
so  regarded.  Of  all  sciences,  astronomy  appeals  most 
to  the  imagination.  What  is  rational  in  "  Eureka " 
mostly  is  a  re-statement  of  accepted  theories :  other- 
wise the  treatise  is  vague  and  nebulous,  —  a  light 
dimmed  by  its  own  vapor.  The  work  is  curiously  sat- 
urated with  our  modern  Pantheism;  and  although  in 
many  portions  it  shows  the  author's  weariness,  yet  it 
was  a  notable  production  for  a  layman  venturing  within 
the  precincts  of  the  savant.  The  poetic  instinct  hits 
upon  truths  which  the  science  of  the  future  confirms  j 
but  as  often,  perhaps,  it  glorifies  some  error  sprung 
from  a  too  ardent  generalization.  Poe's  inexactness 
was  shown  in  frequent  slips,  —  sometimes  made  un- 
consciously, sometimes  in  reliance  upon  the.  dulness 
of  his  rivals  to  save  him  from  detection.  He  was  on 
the  alert  for  other  people's  errors ;  for  his  own  facts, 
were  he  now  alive,  he  could  not  call  so  lightly  upon 
his  imagination.  Even  our  younger  authors,  here  and 
abroad,  now  are  so  well  equipped  that  their  learning 
seems  to  handicap  their  winged  steeds.  Poe  had, 
above  all,  the  gift  of  poetic  induction.  He  would  have 
divined  the  nature  of  an  unknown  world  from  a  speci- 
men of  its  flora,  a  fragment  of  its  art.     He  felt  himself 


A   FOE   TO  DIDACTICISM. 


263 


something  more  than  a  bookman.     He  was  a  creator 
of  the  beautiful,  and  hence  the  conscious  struggle  of 
his  spirit  for  the  sustenance  it  craved.     Even  when  he 
was  most  in  error,  he  labored  as  an  artist,  and  it  is 
idle  criticism  that  judges  him  upon  any  other  ground. 
Accept  him,  then,  whether  as  poet  or  romancer,  as 
a  pioneer  of   the   art  feeling  in  American   literature. 
So  far  as  he  was  devoted  to  art  for  art's  sake,  it  was 
for  her  sake   as   the   exponent   of  beauty.     No   man 
ever  lived   in  whom   the   passion   for  loveliness  more 
plainly  governed   the  emotions  and  convictions.     His 
service   of   the.  beautiful  was   idolatry,  and   he  would 
have  kneeled  with  Heine  at  the  feet  of  Our  Lady  of 
Milo,   and   believed    that   she   yearned    to   help   him. 
This  consecration  to  absolute  beauty  made  him  abhor 
the  mixture  of  sentimentalism,  metaphysics,  and  mor- 
als, in  its  presentation.     It  was  a  foregone  conclusion 
that   neither  Longfellow,  Emerson,  Lowell,  nor  Haw- 
thorne   should  wholly  satisfy  him.      The   question   of 
"  moral "  tendency  concerned   him   not   in   the   least. 
He   did   not   feel  with  Keats   that   "Beauty  is   truth, 
truth  beauty,"  and   that   a   divine   perfection   may  be 
reached  by  either  road.     This  deficiency  narrowed  his 
range  both  as  a  poet  and  as  a  critic.     His  sense  of 
justice  was   a   sense  of   the   fitness  of   things,  and  — 
strange  to  say  —  when  he  put  it  aside  he  forgot  that 
he  was  doing  an  unseemly  thing.     Otherwise,  he  rep- 
resents, or  was  one   of   the  first   to   lead,  a  rebellion 
against    formalism,    commonplace,    the    spirit    of    the 
bourgeois.     In  this   movement  Whitman   is   his  coun- 
tertype   at  the   pole   opposite   from  that   of   art;   and 
hence  they  justly  are  picked  out  from  the  rest  of  us 
and    associated   in    foreign   minds.     Taste   was   Poe's 
supreme  faculty.     Beauty,  to  him,  was  a  definite  and 
logical   reality,  and  he   would  have   scouted   Ve'ron's 


Poe's  ab- 
solute love 
of  beauty. 


His  protest 
against  d* 
dacticism. 


Tost*. 


264 


EDGAR  ALLAN  FOE. 


Isolation. 


Decorative 
feeling. 


A  tragedy. 


A  singular 
antipa- 
thetic 
career. 


claim  that  it  has  no  fixed  objective  laws,  and  exists 
only  in  the  nature  of  the  observer.  Although  the 
brakes  of  art  were  on  his  imagination,  his  taste  was 
not  wholly  pure  ;  he  vacillated  between  the  classic 
forms  and  those  allied  with  color,  splendor,  Oriental 
decoration ;  between  his  love  for  the  antique  and  his 
impressions  of  the  mystical  and  grotesque.  But  he 
was  almost  without  confraternity.  An  artist  in  an 
unartistic  period,  he  had  to  grope  his  way,  to  con- 
tend with  stupidity  and  coarseness.  Again,  his  imag- 
ination, gloating  upon  the  possibilities  of  taste,  vio- 
lated its  simplicity.  Poe  longed  for  the  lamp  of 
Aladdin,  for  the  riches  of  the  Gnomes.  Had  un- 
bounded wealth  been  his,  he  would  have  outvied 
Beckford,  Landor,  Dumas,  in  barbaric  extravagance 
of  architecture.  His  efforts  to  apply  the  laws  of  the 
beautiful  to  imaginary  decoration,  architecture,  land- 
scape, are  very  fascinating  as  seen  in  "The  Philoso- 
phy of  Furniture,"  "Landscape  Gardening,"  and  "Lan- 
dor's  Cottage."  "  The  Domain  of  Arnheim "  is  a 
marvellous  dream  of  an  earthly  paradise,  and  the 
close  is  a  piece  of  word-painting  as  effective  as  the 
language  contains.  Regarding  this  sensitive  artist, 
this  original  poet,  it  seems  indeed  a  tragedy  that  a 
man  so  ideal  in  either  realm,  so  unfit  for  contact 
with  ugliness,  dulness,  brutality,  should  have  come  to 
eat  husks  with  the  swine,  to  be  misused  by  their  hu- 
man counterparts,  and  to  die  the  death  of  a  drunk- 
ard, in  the  refuge  which  society  offers  to  the  most 
forlorn  and  hopeless  of  its  castaways. 

VII. 

Seeking  our  illustrations  of  the  poetic  life,  we  find 
no  career  of  more  touching  and  peculiar  interest  than 


HIS  LITERARY  EXECUTOR. 


265 


that  of  Poe.  It  is  said  that  disaster  followed  him 
even  after  death,  in  the  vicious  memoir  which  Gris- 
wold  prefixed  to  his  collected  works;  and  doubtless 
the  poet  should  have  had  for  his  biographer  a  man 
of  kind  and  healthy  discernment,  like  Kennedy,  his 
townsman  and  generous  friend.  Yet  Poe  showed  tact 
in  choosing  Griswold,  and  builded  better  than  he 
knew.  He  could  select  no  more  indefatigable  book- 
wright  to  bring  together  his  scattered  writings,  and 
he  counted  upon  Death's  paying  all  debts.  In  this 
Poe  was  mistaken.  For  once  Griswold  wrote  as  he 
thought  and  felt,  and  his  memoir,  however  spiteful 
and  unchivalrous,  was  more  sincere  than  many  of  the 
sycophantic  sketches  in  the  bulky  volumes  of  his 
"  Poets  and  Poetry."  Malice  made  him  eloquent,  and 
an  off-hand  obituary  notice  of  the  poet  was  the  most 
nervous  piece  of  work  that  ever  came  from  his  pen. 
It  was  heartless,  and,  in  some  respects,  inaccurate. 
It  brought  so  much  wrath  upon  him  that  he  became 
vindictive,  and  followed  it  up  with  a  memoir,  which, 
as  an  exhibition  of  the  ignoble  nature  of  its  author, 
scarcely  has  a  parallel.  Did  this  in  the  end  affect 
Poe's  fame  injuriously  ?  Far  otherwise ;  it  moved  a 
host  of  writers,  beginning  with  Willis  and  Graham, 
to  recall  his  habit  of  life,  and  reveal  the  good  side 
of  it.  Some  have  gone  as  far  in  eulogy  as  Griswold 
went  toward  the  opposite  extreme.  It  seemed  a  cruel 
irony  of  fate  that  Poe's  own  biographer  should  plant 
thorns  upon  his  grave,  but  he  also  planted  laurels. 
He  paid  an  unstinted  tribute  to  the  poet's  genius, 
and  this  was  the  only  concession  which  Poe  himself 
would  care  to  demand.  With  sterner  irony,  Time 
brings  in  his  revenges  !  In  a  familiar  edition  of  the 
poet's  works,  for  which  Griswold  laid  the  ground- 
work, the   memoir  by   Ingram   is  devoted  largely  to 


GrtswoliTs 
memoir. 


Effect 
upon  Poe's 
fame. 


266 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 


Poe's 

habits  and 
tempera- 
ment. 


Love  of 
the  ideal  a 
restraint 
upon  sen- 
suality. 


Chastity  of 
Poe's  writ- 
ings. 


correcting  the  errors  of  the  Doctor's  long-since  ex- 
cluded sketch,  and  to  exposing  every  act  of  malice 
against  Poe  which  Griswold  committed,  either  before 
or  after  his  foeman's  death. 

After  years  of  censure  and  defence,  and  in  the  light 
of  his  own  writings,  the  poet's  character  is  not  "  be- 
yond all  conjecture."  Here  was  a  man  of  letters  who 
fulfilled  the  traditions  of  a  past  century  in  this  western 
world  and  modern  time  ;  one  over-possessed  and  ham- 
pered by  the  very  temperament  that  made  him  a  poet 
—  and  this,  too,  when  he  thought  himself  deliberate 
and  calculating.  His  head  was  superbly  developed, 
his  brain-power  too  great  for  its  resources  of  supply 
and  control.  The  testimony  of  some  who  knew  his 
home-life  is  that  he  was  tender  and  lovable.  Graham 
and  Willis  aver  that  he  was  patient  and  regular  in 
work,  and  scrupulous  to  return  a  just  amount  of  labor 
for  value  received.  But  many  who  knew  and  be- 
friended him  have  spoken,  more  in  sorrow  than  in 
anger,  of  his  treachery  and  thanklessness,  of  his  in- 
justice to  himself,  and  of  the  degrading  excesses 
which  plunged  him  into  depths  from  which  it  grew 
more  and  more  difficult  to  lift  him. 

Nevertheless,  Poe  was  not  a  man  of  immoral  habits. 
I  assert  that  scholars,  writers,  and  artists,  in  spite  of 
a  tradition  to  the  contrary,  are  less  given,  as  a  class, 
to  forbidden  pleasures  than  business-men  and  idle  men 
of  the  world.  Study  and  a  love  of  the  ideal  protect 
them  against  the  sensuality  by  which  too  many  dull 
the  zest  of  their  appetites.  Poe  was  no  exception  to 
the  rule.  He  was  not  a  libertine.  Woman  was  to 
him  the  impersonation  of  celestial  beauty,  her  influence 
soothed  and  elevated  him,  and  in  her  presence  he  was 
gentle,  winning,  and  subdued.  There  is  not  an  un- 
chaste suggestion  in  the  whole  course  of  his  writings, 


HEREDITY  AND   CIRCUMSTANCE. 


267 


—  a  remarkable  fact,  in  view  of  his  acquaintance  with 
the  various  schools  of  French  literature.  His  works 
are  almost  too  spiritual.  Not  of  the  earth,  earthy, 
their  personages  meet  with  the  rapture  and  co-absorp- 
tion of  disembodied  souls.  His  verse  and  prose  ex- 
press devotion  to  Beauty  in  her  most  ethereal  guise, 
and  he  justly  might  cry  out  with  Shelley :  — 

"I  vowed  that  I  would  dedicate  my  powers 
To  thee  and  thine ;  have  I  not  kept  the  vow  ? " 

Nor  was  he  undevotional.  His  sense  of  the  sublime 
and  mystical  filled  him  with  thoughts  of  other  worlds 
and  existences  than  ours;  if  there  is  pride,  there  is 
reverence,  in  his  bold  imaginings.  He  felt  a  spark  of 
the  divine  fire  within  him,  and  the  pride  of  his  intel- 
lectual disdain  was,  like  the  Titan's,  a  not  inglorious 
sin.  Finally,  Poe  was  not  an  habitual  drunkard.  He 
had  woful  fits  of  drunkenness,  varying  in  frequency, 
and  sometimes  of  degradation  j  for  a  single  glass  made 
him  the  easy  prey  of  any  coarse  and  pitiless  hands 
into  which  he  might  fall.  He  was  a  man  inebriate 
when  sober,  his  brain  surging  with  emotion,  and  a 
stimulant  that  only  served  to  steady  common  men 
bewildered  him.  As  with  women,  the  least  contami- 
nation was  to  him  debasement.  His  mature  years 
were  a  battle  with  inherited  taint,  and  there  were  long 
periods  in  which  he  was  the  victor.  This  taint  had 
been  increased  by  drugging  in  infancy,  and  by  the 
convivial  usages  of  his  guardian's  household.  Bear- 
ing in  mind,  also,  the  lack  of  self-control  inherent  in 
Celtic  and  Southern  natures,  I  think  he  made  a  plucky 
fight.  The  duty  of  self-support  was  not  one  to  which 
he  had  been  trained,  and  was  more  than  he  could  bear. 
Imagine  Shelley,  who  made  his  paper  boats  of  bank- 
notes, Byron  and  Landor,  who  had  their  old  estates, 


Not  a 
scoffer  nor 
an  habit- 
ual drunk- 
ard. 


His  hered- 
itary taint. 


268 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 


Effects  of 
poverty. 
Cfi.  "  Vic- 
torian 
Poets  "  : 
p.  8x. 


His  sensi- 
tive tern- 
perament. 


forced  to  write  by  the  column  for  their  weekly  board. 
"  Poverty  has  this  disease  :  through  want  it  teaches  a 
man  evil."  More,  it  limits  the  range  of  his  possibili- 
ties. Doudan  has  said,  with  truth  and  feeling,  that 
he  who  is  without  security  for  the  morrow  can  neither 
meditate  upon  nor  accomplish  a  lasting  work.  The 
delicate  fancies  of  certain  writers  are  not  always  at 
quick  command,  and  the  public  is  loath  to  wait  and 
pay  for  quality.  Poe,  more  than  once,  fell  into  dis- 
grace by  not  being  able  to  meet  his  literary  engage- 
ments on  time.  His  most  absurd  and  outrageous 
articles,  such  as  the  one  put  forth  after  his  Boston 
lecture,  were  the  bluster  of  a  man  who  strove  to  hide 
a  sense  of  humiliation  and  failure.  Doubtless,  he  se- 
cretly invoked  the  gods  in  his  own  behalf.  He  knew, 
like  Chenier  going  to  his  death,  that  it  was  a  pity  — 
he  was  worth  saving.  Generous  efforts,  in  truth,  were 
made  to  save  him,  by  strong  and  tender  friends,  but 
these  were  quite  in  vain.  He  carried  a  death-warrant 
within  him.  Well  might  he  feel  that  a  spell  was  on 
him,  and  in  one  tale  and  another  try  to  make  the 
world  —  which  he  affected  to  despise  —  comprehend 
its  fatality,  and  bespeak  the  sympathetic  verdict  of 
the  future  upon  his  defeat  and  doom. 

It  is  just  that  well-balanced  persons  should  rebuke 
the  failings  of  genius.  But  let  such  an  one  imagine 
himself  with  a  painfully  sensitive  organization,  —  "  all 
touch,  all  eye,  all  ear " ;  with  appetites  almost  resist- 
less ;  with  a  frame  in  which  health  and  success  breed 
a  dangerous  rapture,  disease  and  sorrow  a  fatal  de- 
spair. Surmount  all  this  with  a  powerful  intelligence 
that  does  not  so  much  rule  the  structure  as  it  menaces 
it,  and  threatens  to  shake  it  asunder.  Let  him  con- 
ceive himself  as  adrift,  from  the  first,  among  adverse 
surroundings,   now  combating  his  environment,   now 


HIS  UNMORALITY. 


269 


struggling  to  adjust  himself  to  it.  He,  too,  might 
find  his  judgment  a  broken  reed  ;  his  passions  might 
get  the  upper  hand  ;  his  perplexities  bring  him  to 
shamelessness  and  ruin.  It  was  thus  the  poet's  curse 
came  upon  him,  and  the  wings  of  his  Psyche  were 
sorrowfully  trailed  in  the  dust.  I  have  said  to  friends 
as  they  sneered  at  the  ill-managed  life  of  one  whose 
special  genius  perhaps  could  not  exist  but  in  union 
with  certain  infirmities,  that  instead  of  recounting 
these,  and  deriding  them,  they  should  hedge  him  round 
with  their  protection.  We  can  find  more  than  one 
man  of  sense  among  a  thousand,  but  how  rarely  a 
poet  with  such  a  gift !  When  he  has  gone  his  music 
will  linger,  and  be  precious  to  those  who  never  have 
heard,  like  ourselves,  the  sweet  bells  jangled. 

Making  every  allowance,  Poe  was  terribly  blam- 
able.  We  all  are  misunderstood,  and  all  condemned 
to  toil.  The  sprites  have  their  task-work,  and  can- 
not always  be  dancing  in  the  moonlight.  At  times, 
we  are  told,  they  have  to  consort  with  what  is  ugly, 
and  even  take  on  its  guise.  Unhappily,  Poe  was  the 
reverse  of  one  who  "  fortune's  buffets  and  rewards 
has  ta'en  with  equal  thanks."  He  stood  good  for- 
tune more  poorly  than  bad  ;  any  emotion  would  upset 
him,  and  his  worst  falls  were  after  successes,  or  with 
success  just  in  sight.  His  devotion  to  beauty  was 
eagerly  selfish.  He  had  a  heart,  and  in  youth  was 
loyal  to  those  he  loved.  In  this  respect  he  differed 
from  the  hero  of  "A  Strange  Story,"  born  without 
affection  or  soul.  But  his  dream  was  that  of  "  The 
Palace  of  Art "  —  a  lordly  pleasure-house,  where  taste 
and  love  should  have  their  fill,  regardless  of  the  outer 
world.  It  has  been  well  said,  that  if  not  immoral, 
he  was  unmoral.  With  him  an  end  justified  the  means, 
and  he  had  no  conception  of  the  law  and  limitations 


The  price- 
less rarity 
of  genius. 


Lack  of 
self-poise. 


Not  im- 
moral^ but 
■unmoral. 


270 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 


Is  genius 
the  product 
of  neurotic 
disorder  ? 


of  liberty,  no  practical  sense  of  right  or  wrong.  At 
the  most,  he  ignored  such  matters  as  things  irrelevant. 
Now  it  is  not  essential  that  one  should  have  a  creed ; 
he  may  relegate  theologies  to  the  regions  of  the  un- 
knowable; but  he  must  be  just  in  order  to  fear  not, 
and  humane  that  he  may  be  loved  ;  he  must  be  faith- 
ful to  some  moral  standard  of  his  own,  otherwise  his 
house,  however  beautiful  and  lordly,  is  founded  in  the 
sand. 

The  question  always  will  recur,  whether,  if  Poe  had 
been  able  to  govern  his  life  aright,  he  would  not  also 
have  been  conventional  and  tame,  and  so  much  the 
less  a  poet.  Were  it  not  for  his  excesses  and  neurotic 
crises,  should  we  have  had  the  peculiar  quality  of  his 
art  and  the  works  it  has  left  us  ?  I  cannot  here  dis- 
cuss the  theory  that  his  genius  was  a  frenzy,  and  that 
poetry  is  the  product  of  abnormal  nerve-vibrations. 
The  claim,  after  all,  is  a  scientific  statement  of  the 
belief  that  great  wits  are  sure  to  madness  near  allied. 
An  examination  of  it  involves  the  whole  ground  of 
fate,  free  will,  and  moral  responsibility.  I  think  that 
Poe  was  bounden  for  his  acts.  He  never  failed  to 
resent  infringements  upon  his  own  manor ;  and,  how- 
ever poor  his  self-control,  it  was  not  often  with  him 
that  the  chord  of  self  passed  trembling  out  of  sight. 
Possibly  his  most  exquisite,  as  they  were  his  most 
poetic,  moments,  were  at  those  times  when  he  seemed 
very  wretched,  and  avowed  himself  oppressed  by  a 
sense  of  doom.  He  loved  his  share  of  pain,  and  was 
an  instance  of  the  fact  that  man  is  the  one  being  that 
takes  keen  delight  in  the  tragedy  of  its  own  existence, 
and  for  whom 


'Joy  is  deepest  when  it  springs  from 


woe.' 


Wandering  among  the  graves  of  those  he  had  cher- 


FATAL  LACK  OF  WILL. 


271 


ished,  invoking  the  spectral  midnight  skies,  believing 
himself  the  Orestes  of  his  race  — in  all  this  he  was 
fulfilling  his  nature,  deriving  the  supremest  sensations, 
feeding  on  the  plants  of  night  from  which  such  as  he 
obtain  their  sustenance  or  go  famished.  They  who 
do  not  perceive  this  never  will  comprehend  the  mys- 
teries of  art  and  song,  of  the  heart  from  whose  re- 
cesses these  must  be  evoked.  They  err  who  com- 
miserate Poe  for  such  experiences.  My  own  pity  for 
him  is  of  another  kind ;  it  is  that  which  we  ever  must 
feel  for  one  in  whom  the  rarest  possibilities  were 
blighted  by  an  inherent  lack  of  will.  In  his  sensi- 
tiveness to  impressions  like  the  foregoing,  he  had  at 
once  the  mood  and  material  for  far  greater  results 
than  he  achieved.  A  violin  cracks  none  the  sooner 
for  being  played  in  a  minor  key.  His  instrument 
broke  for  want  of  a  firm  and  even  hand  to  use  it  — 
a  virile,  devoted  master  to  prolong  the  strain. 

Poe's  demand  for  his  present  wish  was  always 
strong,  yet  it  was  the  caprice  of  a  child,  and  not  the 
determination  that  stays  and  conquers.  He  was  no 
more  of  an  egoist  than  was  Goethe  j  but  self-absorp- 
tion is  the  edged  tool  that  maims  a  wavering  hand. 
His  will,  in  the  primary  sense,  was  weak  from  the  be- 
ginning. It  became  more  and  more  reduced  by  those 
habits  which,  of  all  the  defences  of  a  noble  mind, 
attack  this  stronghold  first.  It  was  not  able  to  pre- 
serve for  him  the  sanity  of  true  genius,  and  his  prod- 
uct, therefore,  was  so  much  the  less  complete. 

"  O  well  for  him  whose  will  is  strong ! 
He  suffers,  but  he  will  not  suffer  long." 

Poe  suffered,  in  bitter  truth,  and  the  end  came  not 
through  triumph,  but  in  death.  His  fame  is  not  what 
it  might  have  been,  we  say ;  yet  it  is  greater  than  he 


Secret  of 
Foe's  dis- 
asters. 


No  real 
strength 
will. 


272 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 


Fame 
waits  on 
worth  and 
work. 


—  dying  with  a  sense  of  incompleteness  —  probably 
expected  it  to  be,  and  more  than  he  could  have  asked. 
In  spite,  then,  of  the  most  reckless  career,  the  work  a 
man  really  accomplishes  —  both  for  what  it  is  in  it- 
self and  for  what  it  reveals  of  the  author's  gift  —  in 
the  end  will  be  valued  exactly  at  its  worth.  Does  the 
poet,  the  artist,  demand  some  promise  that  it  also  may 
be  made  to  tell  during  our  working  life,  and  even  that 
life  be  lengthened  till  the  world  shall  learn  to  honor 
it?  Let  him  recall  the  grave,  exalted  words  which 
Poe  took  at  hazard  for  his  "  Ligeia,"  and  stayed  not 
to  dwell  upon  their  spiritual  meaning  :  "  Man  doth 
not  yield  himself  to  the  angels,  nor  unto  death  utterly, 
save  only  through  the  weakness  of  his  own  feeble 
will." 


CHAPTER    VIII. 


OLIVER  WENDELL   HOLMES. 


A  DISCUSSION  of  any  art  or  artist  readily  enough 
might  begin  with  a  chapter  on  Fashion.  Of  this 
I  ask  no  livelier  illustration  than  the  experience  of  a 
poet  whose  time-honored  method  is  just  now  fresh  in 
favor,  as  if  he  were  at  matins  instead  of  even-song. 
It  is  somewhat  strange  that  the  Greeks  —  at  least 
those  late  Athenians  who  spent  their  time  in  nothing 
else  but  either  to  tell  or  to  hear  some  new  thing  — 
should  have  left  vacant  the  seat  in  their  hemicycle  to 
which  their  gay  inheritors  have  directed  that  puissant 
goddess,  La  Mode.  The  dullest  know  that  to  her  are 
sacred,  as  the  school-books  say,  not  only  dress  and 
manners,  but  styles  of  furniture,  decoration,  and  all 
that  caters  to  the  lust  of  the  eye  and  the  pride  of  life. 
But  the  adept  perceive  that  fashion  often  decides  our 
taste  in  literature,  our  bent  of  study,  and  even  of  re- 
ligious thought ;  how  much  it  has  to  do  with  the  spirit, 
no  less  than  the  outcome,  of  human  effort.  Progress 
comes  by  experiment,  and  this  from  ennui  —  ennui 
that  leads  to  voyages,  wars,  revolutions,  and  plainly  to 
change  in  the  arts  of  expression  ;  that  cries  out  to  the 
imagination,  and  is  the  nurse  of  the  invention  whereof 
we  term  necessity  the  mother.  The  best  of  modes  is 
not  above  challenge.  No  stroke  can  always  hold  the 
trophy.  Pretty  much  the  same  instinct  that  makes  a 
18 


Fashion^ 
or  Vogtu% 
in  A  rt. 
Cp.  "  Vic- 
torian 
Poets": 
p.  150. 


274 


OLIVER   WENDELL  HOLMES. 


Revival  of 
old  time 
modes. 


woman  accept  the  later,  perhaps  the  uglier,  style  of 
dress,    secures   a  trial,    even   a   vogue,    to   some   new 
method    in  art    or   letters.     Few   demur   longer  than 
Taglioni's  sister,  who  stared  at  a  bonnet,  the  last  new 
thing  from   Paris,   then   laughed    outright    and    said, 
"How  very  ridiculous  you  look,  my  dear.  .  .  .     Can 
you  get  me  one  like  it  ? "     In  fact,  we  must  have  dis- 
covery, and  that  by  licensing  the  fashions  of  successive 
times,  most  of  them  defective,  many  retrogressive,  a 
few  on  the  path   to    higher  use    and   beauty.     These 
few  may  return  again  and  again  ;  they  go  out  of  sight, 
but  on  an  elliptic   orbit.     Contemporary  judgment  is 
least  of  all  judicial.     The  young  forestall   novelty   it- 
self.    The  old  mistrust  or  look  backward  with  a  sense 
of  loss.     It  is  hard  for  either  to  apply  tests  that  are 
above  each  fashion,  yet  derived  from  all.     I  suppose 
that  in  vicious,  and  in  barren,  periods  of  our  English 
song,  men's  faculties  were  much    the  same   as  ever; 
that  a  sense  of  beauty  was  on  the  alert.     There  is  an 
exhortation   to  critical  humility  when    some   despised 
style  of  a  past  century  suddenly  appears   fit   and   at- 
tractive ;  when,  from   caprice   or  wholesome    instinct, 
we  pick  up   the   round-bowed  spectacles   of  our  for- 
bears and  see    things   as   they  saw  them.     Their  art, 
dress,  accent,  quaintly  rebuke  us  ;  their  dainty  spirit 
lives  again,  and  we  adopt,  as  lightly  as  we  formerly 
contemned,  a  fashion  which  we  avow  that  at  last  we 
rightly  interpret. 

It  is  wholly  natural,  then,  that  a  poet  like  Dr. 
Holmes  should  have  been  in  vogue  and  out  of  vogue ; 
one  who  easily  can  afford  to  regard  either  position 
with  tranquillity,  but  at  times,  it  may  be,  and  solely 
as  to  his  metrical  theories,  thought  somewhat  too  an- 
tiquated by  wits  of  the  new  dispensation.  At  this 
moment,  —  the  favorite  both  of  Time,  to  whom  thanks 


A   POET  OF  THE   OLD  SCHOOL. 


275 


for  touching  him  so  gently,  and  of  a  tide  that  again 
bears  him  forward,  —  he  is  warmly  appreciated  by 
verse-makers  of  the  latest  mode.  As  a  scientific  hom- 
ilist,  his  popular  gauge  has  been  less  subject  to  fluc- 
tuations. Science  has  but  one  fashion  —  to  lose  noth- 
ing once  gained;  and  Holmes's  pluck  and  foresight 
kept  him  ahead  till  his  neighbors  caught  up  and  jus- 
tified him.  His  verse,  however,  puts  us  on  terms  with 
a  man  of  certain  tastes  and  breeding  j  it  is  the  result 
of  qualities  which  may  or  may  not  be  fashionable  at 
a  given  date.  Just  now  they  connect  him  with  the 
army  of  occupation,  —  a  veteran,  it  is  true,  but,  despite 
his  ribbons  and  crosses,  assuredly  not  "retired." 

The  distinction  between  his  poetry  and  that  of  the 
new  makers  of  society-verse  is  that  his  is  a  survival, 
theirs  the  attempted  revival,  of  something  that  has 
gone  before.  He  wears  the  seal  of  "  that  past  Geor- 
gian day"  by  direct  inheritance,  not  from  the  old 
time  in  England,  but  from  that  time  in  England's  let- 
tered colonies,  whose  inner  sections  still  preserve  the 
hereditary  language  and  customs  as  they  are  scarcely 
to  be  found  elsewhere.  His  work  is  as  emblematic  of 
the  past  as  are  the  stairways  and  hand-carvings  in 
various  houses  of  Cambridge,  Portsmouth,  and  Nor- 
wich. Some  of  our  modern  verse  is  a  symptom  of 
the  present  renaissance,  —  which  itself  delights  in 
going  beyond  its  models.  More  spindles,  more  arti- 
fice, more  furbelows  and  elaborate  graces.  Its  origi- 
nals were  an  imitation,  as  we  find  them  in  the  villas 
of  Pope  and  Walpole,  in  Hogarth's  toilet-party,  in  ar- 
chitecture, gardening,  costume,  furniture,  manners. 
Here  were  negro  pages,  gewgaws,  silks  and  porcelain 
from  China  (as  now  from  Japan)  —  a  mixture  of  Brit- 
ish, Gallic,  and  Oriental  fashions  and  decorations. 
Now   we  are  working  in   much  the  same   spirit,   and 


Holmes's 
method  a 
survival, 
and  not  a 
renais- 
sance. 


The  new 
vogtte. 


276 


OLIVER    WENDELL  HOLMES. 


Holmes, 
the  leader 
of  his 
class. 


A  Iways  a 

University 

Poet. 


even  more  resolutely,  with  novelties  added  from  re- 
gions then  unfamiliar,  but  reviving  in  both  life  and 
literature  the  manner  of  that  day.  A  new  liking  for 
the  Georgian  heroics  and  octosyllabics  is  queerly 
blended  with  our  practice  in  the  latest  French  forms, 
—  themselves  a  revival  of  a  far  more  ancient  min- 
strelsy. Such  things  when  first  produced,  the  genuine 
expression  of  their  time,  may  yield  a  less  conscious 
pleasure,  but  are  of  more  worth ;  they  have  the  savor 
of  honest  purpose,  which  their  imitation  lacks.  Among 
living  old-style  poets,  Dr.  Holmes,  the  least  complex 
and  various,  seems  most  nearly  to  the  manner  born  ; 
his  work,  as  I  say,  being  a  survival,  and  not  an  ex- 
periment. It  is  freshened,  however,  by  the  animation 
which,  haplessly  for  compilers  of  provincial  literature, 
was  wanting  in  the  good  Old  Colony  days.  The 
maker  wears  the  ancestral  garb,  and  is  a  poet  in 
spite  of  it.  His  verses  have  the  courtesy  and  wit, 
without  the  pedagogy,  of  the  knee-buckle  time,  and  a 
flavor  that  is  really  their  own.  There  are  other 
eighteenth-century  survivors,  whose  sponsors  are  for- 
mality and  dulness ;  but  Holmes  has  the  modern 
vivacity,  and  adjusts  without  effort  even  the  most 
hackneyed  measures  to  a  new  occasion.  Throughout 
the  changes  of  fifty  years  he  has  practised  the  method 
familiar  to  his  youth,  thinking  it  fit  and  natural,  and 
one  to  which  he  would  do  well  to  cling.  The  con- 
servative persistency  of  his  muse  is  as  notable  in  mat- 
ter as  in  manner.  On  the  whole,  so  far  as  we  can 
classify  him,  he  is  at  the  head  of  his  class,  and  in 
other  respects  a  class  by  himself. 

Though  the  most  direct  and  obvious  of  the  Cam- 
bridge group,  the  least  given  to  subtilties,  he  is  our 
typical  university  poet ;  the  minstrel  of  the  college  that 
bred   him,  and  within  whose   liberties  he  has  taught, 


THE  HARVARD    WIT  AND  LAUREATE. 


277 


jested,  sung,   and  toasted,  from   boyhood   to  what  in 
common   folk  would  be   old    age.      Alma    Mater  has 
been  more  to  him  than  to   Lowell  or  Longfellow,  — 
has  occupied  a  surprising  portion  of  his  range  j  if  we 
go  back    to   Frere  and    Canning,  even    to   Gray,  for 
his  like,  there  is  no  real  prototype,  and  yet,  as  a  uni- 
versity poet,  he  curiously  illustrates  his  own  theories 
of  natural  descent.     Behind  him  figure  many  Harvard 
rhymesters,  —  scholars  and  divines,  who,  like  the  War- 
tons  at  Oxford,  wrote  verse  whether  poets  or  not,  Eng- 
lish and  Latin  nullo  discrimine,  and  few  indeed  were 
our   early   verse-makers    that   were   not   college   men. 
Holmes    would    be    Holmes,  if    Norton    and    Urian 
Oakes,  —  to  say  nothing  of  their  Tenth  Muse,  Mistress 
Bradstreet,  whose  Augustan  features,  if  some  Smybert 
only  had  preserved  them  for  us,  assuredly  should  dis- 
tinguish the  entrance  to  the  Harvard  Annex,  —  if  these 
worthies,  even  if  Byles  and  Green,  had  not  flourished 
before  him  j  but  he  is  the  lawful  heir  to  their  fervor, 
wit,  and  authority,  and  not  until  he  came  into  his  estate 
could  Harvard  boast  a  natural  songster  as  her  laureate. 
Two  centuries  of  acclimation,  and  some  experience  of 
liberty,  probably  were  needed  to  germinate  the  fancy 
that  riots  in  his  measures.     Before  his  day,  moreover, 
the  sons  of  the  Puritans  hardly  were  ripe  for  the  doc- 
trine that  there  is  a  time  to  laugh,  that  humor  is  quite 
as  helpful  a  constituent  of  life   as  gravity  or  gloom. 
Provincial-wise,  they  at  first  had  to  receive  this  in  its 
cruder  form,   and   relished   heartily  the   broad   fun  of 
Holmes's   youthful   verse.      Their   mirth -maker    soon 
perceived  that  both   fun    and  feeling   are   heightened 
when  combined.     As  a  wit,  no  writer  of  English,  unless 
it  be  Lowell,  at  this  day  vies  with  him.     As  a  humorist, 
the  poet  of  "  The  Last  Leaf "  was  among  the  first  to 
teach  his  countrymen  that  pathos  is  an  equal  part  of 


Disperser 
of  the  an- 
cestral 
gloom. 


278 


OLIVER   WENDELL  HOLMES. 


Oliver 
Wendell 
Holmes : 
born  in 
Cam- 
bridge, 
Mass. , 
Aug.  29, 
1809. 


At  Har- 
vard, 
1825-29. 


Light  of 
heart,  and 
full  of 
health  and 
zest. 


true  humor ;  that  sorrow  is  lightened  by  jest,  and  jest 
redeemed  from  coarseness  by  emotion,  under  most  con- 
ditions of  this  our  evanescent  human  life. 


II. 

What  one  does  easily  is  apt  to  be  his  forte,  though 
years  may  pass  before  he  finds  this  out.  Holmes's 
early  pieces,  mostly  college-verse,  were  better  of  their 
kind  than  those  of  a  better  kind  written  in  youth  by 
some  of  his  contemporaries.  The  humbler  the  type, 
the  sooner  the  development^  The  young  poet  had 
the  aid  of  a  suitable  habitat;  life  at  Harvard  was 
the  precise  thing  to  bring  out  his  talent.  There  was 
nothing  of  the  hermit-thrush  in  him ;  his  temper  was 
not  of  the  withdrawing  and  reflective  kind,  nor  mood- 
ily introspective,  —  it  throve  on  fellowship,  and  he 
looked  to  his  mates  for  an  audience  as  readily  as  they 
to  him  for  a  toast-master.  He  seems  to  have  escaped 
the  poetic  measles  altogether ;  if  not,  he  hid  his  dis- 
order with  rare  good  sense,  for  his  verse  nowhere 
shows  that  he  felt  himself  "among  men,  but  not  of 
them  "  1  on  the  contrary,  he  fairly  might  plume  himself 
on  reversing  the  Childe's  boast,  and  declare  "  I  have 
loved  the  world,  and  the  world  me."  The  thing  we 
first  note  is  his  elastic,  buoyant  nature,  displayed  from 
youth  to  age  with  cheery  frankness,  —  so  that  we  in- 
stinctively search  through  his  Dutch  and  Puritan  an- 
cestries to  see  where  came  in  the  strain  that  made  this 
Yankee  Frenchman  of  so  likable  a  type.  Health  be- 
gets relish,  and  Holmes  has  never  lacked  for  zest,  — 
zest  that  gives  one  the  sensations  best  worth  living  'for, 
if  happiness  be  the  true  aim  of  life.  He  relished  from 
the  first,  as  keenly  as  an  actor  or  orator  or  a  clever 
woman,  appreciation  within  sight  and  sound.     There  is 


MEDICAL  MEN  OF  LETTERS. 


279 


an  unwritten  Plaudite  at  the  end  of  every  poem,  al- 
most of  every  stanza.  He  has  taken  his  reward  as  he 
went  along,  even  before  printing  his  songs  5  and  if  he 
should  fail  of  the  birds  in  the  bush,  certainly  has  held 
to  every  one  in  hand.  It  is  given  to  few  to  capture 
both  the  present  and  the  future,  —  to  Holmes,  perhaps, 
more  nearly  than  to  most  of  his  craft,  yet  he  would 
be  the  last  to  doubt  that  he  stands  on  lower  ground 
than  those  to  whom  poetry,  for  its  own  sake,  has  been 
a  passion  and  belief.  In  his  early  work  the  mirth  so 
often  outweighed  the  sentiment  as  to  lessen  the  prom- 
ise and  the  self-prediction  of  his  being  a  poet  indeed. 
Some  of  one's  heart-blood  must  spill  for  this,  and, 
while  many  of  his  youthful  stanzas  are  serious  and 
eloquent,  those  which  approach  the  feeling  of  true 
poetry  are  in  celebration  of  companionship  and  good 
cheer,  so  that  he  seems  like  a  down  East  Omar  or 
Hafiz,  exemplifying  what  our  gracious  Emerson  was 
wont  to  preach,  that  there  is  honest  wisdom  in  song 
and  joy. 

If  the  Rev.  Abiel  Holmes  had  serious  thoughts  of 
finding  his  boy  so  animated  by  the  father's  "  Life  of  Dr. 
Stiles "  as  to  be  set  upon  entering  the  ministry,  they 
must  have  faded  out  as  he  read  the  graceless  rhymes, 
the  comic  and  satiric  verse,  which  the  vivacious  youth 
furnished  to  "  The  Collegian."  His  metrical  escapades 
also  boded  ill,  as  in  Lowell's  case,  for  a  long  allegiance 
to  the  law,  —  which,  it  seems,  he  read  after  graduation. 
No  one  can  long  remain  a  good  lawyer  and  a  fertile 
man  of  letters.  The  medical  profession,  however,  has 
teemed  with  poets  and  scholars  j  for  its  practice  makes 
literary  effort  a  delightful  change,  an  avocation,  rather 
than  a  fatiguing  addition  to  scriptural  labor  for  daily 
bread.  Dr.  Samuel  Latham  Mitchill,  for  instance,  fifty 
years  ago   in    New  York,  was   almost  the   prototype, 


"The  Col- 
legian," 
1830. 


Medical 
men  of 
letters. 


28o 


OLIVER   WENDELL  HOLMES. 


Qualities 

of 

Holmes's 

early 

verse. 


Rhetoric. 


mutatis  mutandis,  of  our  Autocrat,  by  virtue  of  his  wit, 
learning,   literary  work,  and   civic  and    social    impor- 
tance.    Holmes  is  a  shining  instance  of  one  who  has 
done  solid  work  as  a  teacher  and  practitioner,  in  spite 
of  his  success  in  literature.     As  a  versifier,  he  started 
with   the   advantage   of  hitting  the  public   by  buffo- 
pieces,  and  with  the  disadvantage  of  being  expected 
to  make  his  after-hits  in  the  same  manner, — to  write 
for  popular  amusement  in  the  major  rather  than  the 
minor  key.     His  verses,  with  the  measured  drum-beat 
of   their  natural    rhythm,  were  easily  understood;  he 
bothered  his   audience  with  no  accidental  effects,  no 
philandering  after  the  finer  lyrical  distinctions.     It  is 
not  hard  to  surmise  what  "  standard  "  poets  had  been 
found  on  his  father's  book-shelves.     Eloquence  was  a 
feature  of  his  lyrics,  —  such  as  broke  out  in  the  line, 
"  Ay,  tear  her  tattered  ensign  down  !  "  and  the  simple 
force  of  "  Old  Ironsides  "  is  indeed  worth  noting  as  it 
culminates  in  the  last   stanza.  yThe  making  of  verse 
that  is  seized   upon   by  school-day  spokesmen  barely 
outlived  the  influence  of  Croly,  of  Drake  and  Halleck, 
of  Pierpont  with  his  "  Stand  !  the  ground  's  your  own, 
my  braves  !  "  and  Holmes  himself  would  scarcely  write 
in  this  way  now.     Yet  one  who  sees,  looming  up  by 
the  Portsmouth  docks,  a  fine  old  hulk  to  which  these 
lines  secured  half  a  century  of  preservation  will  find 
them  coming  again  to  mind.     "The  Meeting  of  the 
Dryads,"  another  early  poem,  is  marked  by  so  much 
grace  that  it  seems  as  if  the  youth  who  wrote  its  qua- 
trains might  in  time  have  added  a  companion-piece  to 
"  The  Talking  Oak."     The  things  which  he  turned  off 
with  purely  comic  aim  were   neatly  finished,  and  the 
merriment  of  a   new  writer,  who   dared   not  be    "as 
funny  "  as  he  could,  did  quite  as  much  for  him  as  his 
poems  of  a  higher  class.     The  fashion  of  the  latter, 


PERSONAL   TRAITS. 


28l 


however,  we  see  returning  again.     There  is  the  pathetic 
silhouette  of  the  old  man,  who  so 

"shakes  his  feeble  head, 
That  it  seems  as  if  he  said, 
'They  are  gone.'" 

This  equals  the  best  recent  knee-buckle  verse,  and 
excels  most  of  it  in  simplicity.  It  taught  a  lesson  to 
Locker  and  Saxe,  and  more  than  one  among  younger 
favorites  look  up  to  Holmes  affectionately,  conscious 
that  the  author  of  "  The  Last  Leaf,"  "  My  Aunt," 
"  The  Dilemma,"  and  of  later  trifles  still  more  refined, 
like  "  Dorothy  Q.,"  is  the  Nestor  of  their  light-armed 
holiday  encampment. 

A  poet  so  full  of  zest  is  wont  to  live  his  life,  rather 
than  to  scorn  delights  in  service  of  the  thankless 
muse.  Dr.  Holmes's  easy-going  method,  and  a  sensi- 
ble estimate  of  his  own  powers,  have  defined  the  limits 
of  his  zeal.  His  poetry  was  and  is,  like  his  humor,  the 
overflow  of  a  nervous,  original,  decidedly  intellectual 
nature  ;  of  sparkling  life,  no  less,  in  which  he  gath- 
ered the  full  worth  of  heyday  experiences.  See  that 
glimpse  of  Paris,  a  student's  pencilled  sketch,  with 
Clemence  tripping  down  the  Rue  de  Seine.  It  is  but  a 
bit,  yet  through  its  atmosphere  we  make  out  a  poet  who 
cared  as  much  for  the  sweets  of  the  poetic  life  as  for 
the  work  that  was  its  product.  He  had  through  it  all 
a  Puritan  sense  of  duty,  and  the  worldly  wisdom  that 
goes  with  a  due  perception  of  values,  and  he  never  lost 
sight  of  his  practical  career.  His  profession,  after  all, 
was  what  he  took  most  seriously.  Accepting,  then, 
with  hearty  thanks,  his  care-dispelling  rhyme  and  rea- 
son, pleased  often  by  the  fancies  which  he  tenders  in 
lieu  of  imagination  and  power,  —  we  go  through  the 
collection  of  his  verse,  and  see  that  it  has  amounted 
to  a  great  deal  in  the  course  of  a  bustling  fifty  years. 


Knee- 
buckle 
verse. 


Personal 

cltaracter' 

istics. 


282 


OLIVER   WENDELL  HOLMES. 


A   natural 
songster 
andbal- 
ladist. 


These  numerous  pieces  divide  themselves,  as  to  form, 
into  two  classes,  —  lyrics  and  poetic  essays  in  solid 
couplet-verse  ;  as  to  purpose,  into  the  lighter  songs  that 
may  be  sung,  and  the  nobler  numbers,  part  lyrical,  part 
the  poems,  both  gay  and  sober,  delivered  at  frequent 
intervals  during  his  pleasant  career.  He  is  a  song- 
writer of  the  natural  kind,  through  his  taste  for  the 
open  vowel-sounds,  and  for  measures  that  set  them- 
selves to  tune.  Lyrics  of  high  grade,  whose  verbal 
and  rhythmical  design  is  of  itself  sufficient  for  the 
spiritual  ear,  are  not  those  which  are  best  adapted  to 
the  musician's  needs.  Some  of  Holmes's  ballads  are 
still  better  than  his  songs.  Lines  in  "The  Pilgrim's 
Vision"  have  a  native  flavor:  — 

"Come  hither,  God-be-Glorified, 

And  sit  upon  my  knee ; 
Behold  the  dream  unfolding 

Whereof  I  spake  to  thee, 
By  the  winter's  hearth  in  Leyden, 

And  on  the  stormy  sea." 

Even  his  ballads  are  raciest  when  brimmed  with 
the  element  that  most  attracts  their  author,  that  of 
festive  good-fellowship.  He  gives  us  a  brave  picture 
of  Miles  Standish,  the  little  captain,  stirring  a  posset 
with  his  sword  :  — 

"  He    poured    the    fiery    Hollands    in,  —  the    man    that    never 

feared,  — 
He  took  a  long  and  solemn  draught,  and  wiped  his  yellow 

beard ; 
And  one  by  one  the  musketeers  —  the  men   that  fought  and 

prayed  — 
All   drank   as   't  were   their  mother's   milk,   and    not  a    man 

afraid." 

Yet  if  the  poet's  artistic  conscience  had  been  sterner, 
the  last  two  stanzas  of  this  ballad  "On  Lending  a 


RHYMED  ADDRESSES. 


283 


Punch-bowl "  would  not  have  been  spared  to  weaken 
its  proper  close. 

In  his  favorite  department  Holmes  always  has  been 
an  easy  winner,  gaining  in  quality  as  fast  as  the  stand- 
ard of  such  work  has  advanced.  In  fact,  he  has  ad- 
vanced the  standard  by  his  own  growth  in  brain- 
power and  wisdom.  There  was  a  time  when  half 
our  public  men  wrote  poems  for  recitation,  —  when 
every  set  oration  was  paired  with  a  platform-poem. 
The  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Society  was  answerable  for  many 
labored  pentameters  of  Everett,  Winthrop,  Sprague, 
and  other  versifiers,  born  or  made,  —  equally  so  the 
numberless  corporations  of  the  federative  Saxon  race 
in  our  aspiring  municipalities.  Of  all  these  orators 
in  rhyme,  Holmes,  by  natural  selection,  survives  to 
our  day,  —  and  how  aptly  he  flourishes  withal !  From 
his  start  as  class-poet,  and  his  step  to  the  front  with 
Poetry,  a  Metrical  Essay,  the  intervals  have  not  been 
long  between  his  rhymed  addresses  of  the  standard 
platform  length:  at  first  named,  like  the  books  of 
Herodotus,  after  the  Muses,  —  Urania,  Terpsichore, 
and  so  on,  —  a  practice  shrewdly  abandoned,  see- 
ing that  the  Graces,  the  Fates,  and  all  the  daugh- 
ters of  Nereus  hardly  would  suffice  to  christen  the 
long  succession  of  the  Doctor's  metrical  disquisitions, 
greater  or  less,  that  ceases  not  even  with  our  day. 
In  the  years  that  followed  his  graduation,  while  prac- 
tising in  Boston  and  afterward  a  lecturer  at  Dartmouth, 
he  was  summoned,  nothing  loath,  whenever  a  dinner- 
song  or  witty  ballad  was  needed  at  home,  and  calls 
from  transpontine  and  barbaric  regions  came  fast 
upon  him  as  his  popularity  grew.  Here  are  some 
forty  printed  poems,  which  cheered  that  lucky  class 
of  '29,  and  how  many  others  went  before  and  after 
them  we  know  not.      Among  college-poets  the  para- 


His 

rhymed 

A  ddr esses. 


"  Poetry : 
a  Metrical 
Essay," 
1836. 


14  Poems  of 
the  Class 

1851-81. 


284 


OLIVER    WENDELL  HOLMES. 


Boston, 
and  its 
foet. 


Society 
Verse. 
See  Chap. 
XII.,  and 
cp.  "  Vic- 
torian 
Poets  "  : 
pp.  272, 
273- 


gon,  —  and  surely  this  the  ideal  civic  bard,  who  at 
the  outset  boasted  of  his  town, 

"  Her  threefold  hill  shall  be 
The  home  of  art,  the  nurse  of  liberty," 

and  who  has  celebrated  her  every  effort,  in  peace  or 
war,  to  make  good  the  boast.  He  is  an  essential  part 
of  Boston,  like  the  crier  who  becomes  so  identified 
with  a  court  that  it  seems  as  if  Justice  must  change 
her  quarters  when  he  is  gone.  The  Boston  of  Holmes, 
distinct  as  his  own  personality,  certainly  must  go  with 
him.  Much  will  become  new,  when  old  things  pass 
away  with  the  generation  of  a  wit  who  made  a  jest 
that  his  State  House  was  the  hub  of  the  solar  system, 
and  in  his  heart  believed  it.  The  time  is  ended  when 
we  can  be  so  local;  this  civic  faith  was  born  before 
the  age  of  steam,  and  cannot  outlast,  save  as  a  tradi- 
tion, the  advent  of  electric  motors  and  octuple-sheets. 
Towns  must  lose  their  individuality,  even  as  men,  — 
who  yearly  differ  less  from  one  another.  Yet  the 
provincialism  of  Boston  has  been  its  charm,  and  its 
citizens,  striving  to  be  cosmopolitan,  in  time  may  re- 
pent the  effacement  of  their  birth-mark. 

I  have  referred  to  the  standing  of  Dr.  Holmes  as 
a  life-long  expert  in  the  art  of  writing  those  natty 
lyrics,  satires,  and  jeux  d'esprit,  which  it  has  become 
the  usage  to  designate  as  society-verse.  Ten  years 
ago,  when  discussing  this  "patrician"  industry,  I 
scarcely  foresaw  how  actively  it  soon  would  be  pur- 
sued. Its  minor  devotees  certainly  have  a  place  in 
the  Parnassian  court ;  but,  if  content  with  this  petted 
service,  must  rank  among  the  squires  and  pages,  and 
not  as  lords  of  high  degree.  To  indulge  in  a  conceit, 
—  and  no  change  of  metaphor  is  too  fanciful  with  re- 
spect to  the  poetry  of  conceits  and  graces,  —  much 


SOCIETY-VERSE. 


285 


of  our  modish  verse  is  only  the  souffle'e  and  syllabub 
of  a  banquet  from  which   strength-giving  meats   and 
blooded  wine  are  absent.     Taken  as  the  verse  which 
a  drawling  society  affects  to  patronize,  it  figures  even 
with  the  olives  and  radishes  scattered  along  the  meal, 
wherefrom  arrogance  and  beauty  languidly  pick  trifles 
while  their  thoughts  are  on  something  else,  —  or  with 
the  comfits  at  the  end,  lipped  and  fingered  by  sated 
guests,   or   taken   home   as   a   souvenir    and    for    the 
nursery.      And  yet  society-verse,  meaning  that  which 
catches   the  secret  of  that  day  or  this,  may  be  —  as 
poets  old  and  new  have  shown  us  —  picturesque,  even 
dramatic,  and  rise  to  a  high  degree  of  humor  and  of 
sage  or  tender  thought.      The   consecutive  poems   of 
one  whose  fancy  plays  about  life  as   he  sees  it  may 
be  a  feast  complete  and  epicurean,  having  solid  dishes 
and  fantastic,  all  justly  savored,  cooked  with   discre- 
tion, flanked  with  honest  wine,  and  whose  cates  and 
dainties,  even,  are  not  designed  to  cloy.     Taken  as  a 
whole,  Holmes's  poetry  has  regaled  us  somewhat  after 
this  fashion.      His  pieces  light  and  wise  —  "  Content- 
ment," the  "  Epilogue  to  the  Breakfast-table   Series," 
"  At   the   Pantomime,"    "  A   Familiar   Letter,"   etc.  — 
are  always  enjoyable.      One   or  two  are  exquisite  in 
treatment  of  the  past.     "Dorothy  Q.,"  that  sprightly 
capture   of   a  portrait's  maiden  soul,  has   given,  like 
"The  Last  Leaf,"  lessons  to  admiring  pupils  of  our 
time.     For  sheer  humor,   "The  One-hoss  Shay"  and 
"  Parson   Turell's  Legacy  "   are   memorable,  —  extrav- 
agances, but  full  of  character,  almost  as  purely  Yan- 
kee  as  "Tarn  O'Shanter "  is  purely  Scotch.      In  va- 
rious whimsicalities,   Holmes   sets  the  key  for  Harte 
and  others  to  follow.      "The   First   Fan,"  read  at  a 
bric-a-brac  festival  in   1877,  proves   him  an  adept   in 
the  latest  mode.      There  is  also  a  conceit  of  showing 


Holmes  the 
true  A  m- 
phitryon. 


286 


OLIVER    WENDELL  HOLMES. 


His  most 

ideal 

poems. 


Cp.  "  El- 
egy on  a 
Shell— 
The  Nau- 
tilus": 
Duyck. 
"Cyc.Am. 
Lit."  /., 
537- 


the  youngsters  a  trick  or  two,  in  the  story  "  How  the 
Old  Horse  Won  the  Bet,"  told  to  the  class  of  '71  by 
the  minstrel  of  the  class  of  '29,  and  pointed  with  the 
moral  that  "  A  horse  can  trot,  for  all  he  's  old." 

Good  and  bright  as  these  things   are,  some  of  his 
graver  work  excels  them.     Where  most  in  earnest  he 
is   most   imaginative;  this,  of  course,  is  where   he  is 
most  interested,  and  this  again,  in  moods  the  results 
of  his  scientific  bent  and  experience.     Here  he  shows 
himself   akin   to   those   who   have  both  lightness   and 
strength.     Thackeray's  reverential  mood,  that  was  so 
beautiful,  is   matched  by  the   feeling  which   Holmes, 
having  the  familiarity  with  nature  that  breeds  contempt 
in  grosser  men,  exhibits  in  his  thoughts  upon  "The 
Living  Temple."     The  stanzas  thus  named,  in  meas- 
ure and  reverent  effect,  are  not  unworthy  to  be  read 
with   Addison's   lofty   paraphrase    of    the    Nineteenth 
Psalm.      Humility  in   presence   of  recognized    law  is 
the  spirit  of  the  flings   at  cant  and  half-truth  in  his 
rhymed  essays.     There  are  charity  and  tenderness  in 
"The  Voiceless,"  "Avis,"  "Iris,"  and  "The  Silent  Mel- 
ody."    Another  little  poem,  "  Under  the  Violets,"  re- 
veals the  lover  of  Collins.     But  "  The  Living  Temple  " 
and  "The  Chambered  Nautilus"  doubtless   show  us 
their  writer's  finest  qualities,  and  are  not  soon  to  be 
forgotten.      There  is  a  group  of  his  "Vignettes,"  in 
recollection  of  Wordsworth,  Moore,  Keats,  and  Shelley, 
whose  cadence   is  due  to  that  gift  of  sympathetic  vi- 
bration which  poets  seem  to  possess.      These  pieces 
are  as  good  as  any  to  furnish  examples  of  the  sudden 
fancies  peculiar  to  Holmes's  genius,  whose  glint,  if  not 
imagination,  is  like  that  of  the  sparks  struck  off  from 
it.     One  from  the  stanzas  on  Wordsworth:  — 

"This  is  my  bark,  —  a  pigmy's  ship; 
Beneath  a  child  it  rolls ; 


SPARKLING  'OCCASIONAL'  PIECES. 


TV**** 

%87 


Fear  not,  —  one  body  makes  it  dip, 
But  not  a  thousand  souls." 

And   this  from  the  Shelley  poem,  which  has   an  elo- 
quent movement  throughout:  — 

"But  Love  still  prayed,  with  agonizing  wail, 

'  One,  one  last  look,  ye  heaving  waters,  yield !  ■ 
Till  Ocean,  clashing  in  his  jointed  mail, 

Raised  the  pale  burden  on  his  level  shield." 

The  things  which,  after  all,  sharply  distinguish 
Holmes  from  other  poets,  and  constitute  the  bulk  of 
his  work,  are  the  lyrics  and  metrical  essays  composed 
for  special  audiences  or  occasions.  Starting  without 
much  creative  ambition,  and  as  a  bard  of  mirth  and 
sentiment,  it  is  plain  that  he  was  subject  to  faults 
which  an  easy  standard  entails.  His  aptitude  for 
writing,  with  entire  correctness,  in  familiar  measures, 
has  been  such  that  nothing  but  an  equal  mental  apt- 
ness could  make  up  for  the  frequent  padding,  the  in- 
evitably thin  passages,  of  his  longer  efforts,  and  for 
the  conceits  to  which,  like  Moore  and  Hood,  he  has 
been  tempted  to  sacrifice  the  spirit  of  many  a  grace- 
ful poem.  To  this  day  there  is  no  telling  whither  a 
fancy,  once  caught  and  mounted,  will  bear  this  lively 
rider.  Poetry  at  times  has  seemed  his  diversion, 
rather  than  a  high  endeavor;  yet  perhaps  this  very 
seeming  is  essential  to  the  frolic  and  careless  temper 
of  society-verse.  The  charm  that  is  instant,  the  tri- 
umph of  the  passing  hour,  —  these  are  captured  by 
song  that  often  is  transitory  as  the  night  which  listens 
to  it.  In  Holmes  we  have  an  attractive  voice  devoted 
to  a  secondary  order  of  expression.  Yet  many  of  his 
notes  survive,  and  are  worthy  of  a  rehearing.  A  true 
faculty  is  requisite  to  insure  this  result,  and  it  is  but 
just  to  say  that  with  his  own  growth  his  brilliant  oc- 
casional pieces  strengthened  in  thought,  wit,  and  feeling. 


Faults  and 
merits  of 
the  "occa- 
sional" 
verse. 


288 


OLIVER    WENDELL  HOLMES. 


Eighteenth 
Century 
style  and 
thought. 


With  respect  to  his  style,  there  is  no  one  more  free 
from  structural  whims  and  vagaries.  He  has  an  ear 
for  the  "  classical  "  forms  of  English  verse,  the  aca- 
demic measures  which  still  bid  fair  to  hold  their  own 
—  those  confirmed  by  Pope  and  Goldsmith,  and  here 
in  vogue  long  after  German  dreams,  Italian  languors, 
and  the  French  rataplan  had  their  effect  upon  the 
poets  of  our  motherland  across  the  sea.  His  way  of 
thought,  like  his  style,  is  straightforward  and  senten- 
tious ;  both  are  the  reverse  of  what  is  called  transcen- 
dental. When  he  has  sustained  work  to  do,  and 
braces  himself  for  a  great  occasion,  nothing  will  suit 
but  the  rhymed  pentameter ;  his  heaviest  roadster,  six- 
teen hands  high,  for  a  long  journey.  -It  has  served 
him  well,  is  his  by  use  and  possession,  and  he  stur- 
dily will  trust  it  to  the  end  :  — 

"Friends  of  the  Muse,  to  you  of  right  belong 
The  first  staid  footsteps  of  my  square-toed  song; 
Full  well  I  know  the  strong  heroic  line 
Has  lost  its  fashion  since  I  made  it  mine ; 
But  there  are  tricks  old  singers  will  not  learn, 
And  this  grave  measure  still  must  serve  my  turn. 

Nor  let  the  rhymester  of  the  hour  deride 

The  straight-backed  measure  with  its  stately  stride; 

It  gave  the  mighty  voice  of  Dryden  scope; 

It  sheathed  the  steel-bright  epigrams  of  Pope ; 

In  Goldsmith's  verse  it  learned  a  sweeter  strain; 

Byron  and  Campbell  wore  its  clanking  chain; 

I  smile  to  listen  while  the  critic's  scorn 

Flouts  the  proud  purple  kings  have  nobly  worn ; 

Bid  each  new  rhymer  try  his  dainty  skill 

And  mould  his  frozen  phrases  as  he  will; 

We  thank  the  artist  for  his  neat  device,  — 

The  shape  is  pleasing,  though  the  stuff  is  ice." 

He  compares  it,  as  contrasted  with  later  modes,  to 


HIS  FAVORITE  MEASURE. 


289 


"  the  slashed  doublet  of  the  cavalier,"  —  the  costume 
that   would   be   chosen   by  Velasquez    or  Van  Dyke. 
Now,  the  heroic  measure  is  stately,  but  if  picturesque- 
ness  is  to  be  the  test,  few  will  back  his  opinion  that 
in  this  measure,  as  written  by  Pope's  adherents,  "  Un- 
fading still  the  better  type  endures."     In  the  course 
of  English  song,  the  rhymed  pentameter  has  included 
more  distinct  styles  than  even  blank-verse,  and  quite 
as  plainly  takes  on  the  stamp  of  its  moulder.     For  the 
man,  after  all,  makes  or  mars  it  j  it  lends  itself  with 
fatal  readiness  to  merely  didactic  uses,  and  hence  has 
been  the   patient   slave   of   dullards.     As   written   by 
Chaucer,  it  was  picturesque,  full  of  music  and  color, 
—  the    interfluent,    luxurious    pentameter   couplet,  re- 
vived by  Hunt  and  Keats,  and  variously  utilized  for 
metrical    narrative    by    successive   nineteenth-century 
poets.     Still,    the    "straight-backed,"    heroic    measure 
of  Queen  Anne's   time,  say  what  we  will,  must  be  a 
natural  and  generic  English  form,  that  could  so  main- 
tain itself  to  our  own  day.     Recall  Pope's  measure  in 
"The   Dunciad,"    and   again,    in    "The    Rape  of  the 
Lock,"  —  that  elegant  mock-epic  which  yet  stands  at 
the  head  of  all  poetry  a-la-mode.     How  it  delights  a 
class  that  still  read  Byron  and  Campbell  and  Scott, 
the   learned   body   of   jurists   and    other    professional 
men,  sensible    and   humane,   who   care   little   for  the 
poetry  of  beauty  alone.     I  observe  that  lawyers,  vet- 
eran  judges,  merry   and   discreet,   enjoy  the  verse  of 
Holmes.     It   was    asked    concerning   Landor,    "  Shall 
not  the  wise  have  their  poets  as  well  as  the  witless  ?  " 
and  shall  we  begrudge  the  wigged  and  gowned  their 
rations   of  wit   and   epigram  and  lettered  jest?     Not 
the   form,   but   the   informing  spirit,   is    the   essential 
thing,  and  this  many,  who  are  on  the  watch  for  Amer- 
ican  originality,  fail    to  comprehend.     An   apt   taster 
19 


The 

rhymed 
pentame- 
ter. 


Seep.  89. 


Senten- 
tioustiess. 


290 


OLIVER    WENDELL  HOLMES. 


Master  of 
his  own 
Jield. 


A  distinc- 
tive gift. 


knows  which  wine   has   the   novel  flavor,  though  the 
vintages  look  alike  to  the  eyes. 

The    mechanism    of    Holmes's     briefer    occasional 
poems   is    fully    as    trite    and   simple.     Whether  this 
may  be   from   choice   or   limitation,   he    has    accumu- 
lated a  unique  series  of  pieces,  vivacious  as  those  of 
Tom   Moore,  but  with  the  brain  of  New  England  in 
them,  and  notions  and  instances  without  end.     How 
sure  their  author's  sense  of  the  fitness  of  things,  his 
gift  of   adaptability  to  the    occasion,  —  to  how   many 
occasions,    and  what   different   things !     He   outrivals 
Kossuth,  the  adroit  orator  who  landed  in  a  new  world, 
master  of   its  language,  and  had   forensic  arguments 
for  the  bar,  grace  and  poetry  for  women,  statistics  for 
merchants,  and   an    assortment  of   local   allusions  for 
the  respective  towns  and  villages  in  which  he  pleaded 
his  cause.     A  phantasmagory  of  the  songs,  odes,  and 
rhymed  addresses,  of  so  many  years ;   collegiate   and 
civic  glories ;  tributes  to  princes,  embassies,  generals, 
heroes ;  welcomes  to  novelists  and  poets  •  eulogies  of 
the    dead;  verse   inaugural   and   dedicatory;   stanzas 
read    at    literary  breakfasts,   New    England   dinners, 
municipal  and  bucolic  feasts ;  odes  natal,  nuptial,  and 
mortuary ;  metrical  delectations  offered  to  his  brothers 
of  the  medical  craft  —  to  which  he  is  so  loyal  —  brist- 
ling with  scorn  of  quackery  and  challenge  to   oppos- 
ing systems,  —  not   only  equal   to   all   occasions,  but 
growing  better  with   their  increase.     The  half  of  his 
early  collections  is  made  up  from  efforts  of  this  sort, 
and   they  constitute  four  fifths   of    his   verse   during 
the  last  thirty  years.     Now,  what  has  carried  Holmes 
so  bravely  through  all  this,  if  not   a  kind  of  special 
masterhood,   an  individuality,   humor,  touch,    that   we 
shall  not  see   again  ?     Thus   we   come,  in  fine,  to   be 
sensible  of  the   distinctive   gift    of    this  poet.     The 


PROSE    WRITINGS. 


29I 


achievement  for  which  he  must  be  noted  is,  that  in  a 
field  the  most  arduous  and  least  attractive  he  should 
bear  himself  with  such  zest  and  fitness  as  to  be  num- 
bered among  poets,  and  should  do  honor  to  an  office 
which  they  chiefly  dread  or  mistrust,  and  which  is  little 
calculated  to  excite  their  inspiration. 

III. 

Having  in  mind  the  case  of  our  Autocrat,  one  is 
moved  to  traverse  the  ancient  maxim,  and  exclaim, 
"Count  no  man  unhappy  till  his  dying  day."  There 
are  few  instances  where  a  writer,  suddenly,  and  after 
the  age  when  fame  is  won  "or  never,"  compels  the 
public  to  readjust  its  estimate  of  his  powers.  Holmes 
was  not  idle  as  a  rhymester  from  1836  to  1857 ;  but 
his  chief  labor  was  given  to  medical  practice  and  in- 
struction, and  it  was  fair  to  suppose  that  his  literary 
capacity  had  been  gauged.  Possibly  his  near  friends 
had  no  just  idea  of  his  versatile  talent  until  he  put 
forth  the  most  taking  serial  in  prose  that  ever  estab- 
lished the  prestige  of  a  new  magazine.  At  forty-eight 
he  began  a  new  career,  as  if  it  were  granted  him  to 
live  life  over,  with  the  wisdom  of  middle-age  in  his 
favor  at  the  start.  Coming,  in  a  sense,  like  an  author's 
first  book,  The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-Table  natu- 
rally was  twice  as  clever  as  any  "  first  book "  of  the 
period.  It  appears  that  this  work  was  planned  in  his 
youth  ;  but  we  owe  to  his  maturity  the  experience, 
drollery,  proverbial  humor,  and  suggestion  that  flow 
at  ease  through  its  pages.  Little  is  too  high  or  too 
low  for  the  comment  of  this  down-East  philosopher. 
A  kind  of  attenuated  Franklin,  he  views  things  and 
folks  with  the  less  robustness,  but  with  keener  dis- 
tinction   and   insight.     His   pertinent   maxims   are  so 


His  works 
in  prose. 


"The  Au- 
tocrat of 
the  Break- 
fast-Ta- 
ble," 1858. 


292 


OLIVER   WENDELL  HOLMES. 


frequent  that  it  seems,  as  was  said  of  Emerson,  as  if 
he  had  jotted  them  down  from  time  to  time  and  here 
first  brought  them  to  application  j  they  are  apothegms 
of  common  life  and  action,  often  of  mental  experience, 
strung  together  by  a  device  so  original  as  to  make 
the  work  quite  a  novelty  in  literature.  The  Autocrat 
holds  an  intellectual  tourney  at  a  boarding-house  table ; 
there  jousts  against  humbug  and  stupidity,  gives  light 
touches  of  knowledge,  sentiment,  illustration,  coins 
here  and  there  a  phrase  destined  to  be  long  current, 
nor  forgets  the  poetic  duty  of  providing  a  little  idyl 
of  human  love  and  interest.  Here,  also,  we  find  his 
best  lyrical  pieces,  —  on  the  side  of  beauty,  "  The 
Chambered  Nautilus  "  and  "  The  Living  Temple  "  ; 
on  that  of  mirth,  "  The  One-Hoss  Shay  "  and  its  com- 
panion-piece. How  alert  his  fancy!  A  tree  blows 
down  in  his  woods ;  he  counts  the  rings  —  there  are 
hundreds  of  them.  "  This  is  Shakespeare's.  The 
tree  was  seven  inches  in  diameter  when  he  was  born, 
ten  inches  when  he  died.  A  little  less  than  ten  inches 
when  Milton  was  born  •  seventeen  when  he  died.  .  .  . 
Here  is  the  span  of  Napoleon's  career.  ...  I  have 
seen  many  wooden  preachers,  never  one  like  this." 
Again,  of  letters  from  callow  aspirants  :  "  I  have  two 
letters  on  file  ;  one  is  a  pattern  of  adulation,  the  other 
of  impertinence.  My  reply  to  the  first,  containing  the 
best  advice  I  could  give,  conveyed  in  courteous  lan- 
guage, had  brought  out  the  second.  There  was  some 
sport  in  this,  but  Dullness  is  not  commonly  a  game 
fish,  and  only  sulks  after  he  is  struck."  In  fine,  the 
Autocrat,  if  not  profound,  is  always  acute,  —  the  live- 
liest of  monologists,  and  altogether  too  game  to  be 
taken  at  a  disadvantage  within  his  own  territory. 

Two  later  books,   completing   the    Autocrat   series, 
follow  in  a  similar  vein,  their  scene  the  same  board- 


THE   'AUTOCRAT'   SERIES. 


293 


ing-house,  their  slight  plots  varied  by  new  personages 
and  by-play,   the  conductor  of    the  Yankee  symposia 
the  same  Autocrat,  through  the  aid  of  a  Professor  and 
a   Poet   successively.     The    best   comment   on   these 
works  is  made  by  their  sagacious  author,  who  likens 
them  to  the  wine  of  grapes  that  are  squeezed  in  the 
press  after  the  first  juice  that  runs  of  itself  from  the 
heart  of  the  fruit  has  been  drawn  off.     In  this  lies  a 
recognition  of  the  effect  of  a  market  that  comes  to  an 
author  somewhat  late  in  his  life.     It  is  too  much  to 
expect  that  one  who  makes  a  wonderfully  fresh  start 
at  fifty  should  run  better  and  better,  as  if  in  the  pro- 
gressive and  not  the  decadent   course  of  life,   which 
latter  our  author  himself  reckons  from  a  much  earlier 
stage.     And  a  paying  American  market  for  purely  lit- 
erary work  began  with  the  foundation  of  the  "  Atlan- 
tic."    Poe's  will  had  been   too  weak   to  wait  for  it; 
Hawthorne  had  striven  for  years  \  others  had  struggled 
and   gone  down.     A   lucrative  demand   for   Holmes's 
prose  was  too  grateful   not   to   be    utilized ;   besides, 
the  income  of  the   magazine   required   his   efforts.     I 
have  laid  stress  upon  the  need  of  a  market  to  promote 
literary  activity,  but  it  is  worth  while  to  note  how  far, 
at  certain  times  and  in  special  cases,  too  ready  a  sale 
tends  to   lower   the   grade   of  ideal  work.     This  may 
even  now  be  observed.     On  the  one  hand,  new  writers 
certainly  are  brought  out  by  the  competition  between 
our  thriving  publishers  of  books   and  periodicals  \  on 
the  other,  those  who  prove  themselves  capable,  and  are 
found  available  by  the  caterers,  are  drawn  into  a  sys- 
tem of  over-methodical  production  at  stated  intervals. 
The  stint  is  furnished  regularly;   each  year   or  half- 
year  the  new  novel  is  thrown  off,  cleverly  adapted  to 
the  popular  taste.     Ideal  effort  is  deadened  ;  the  nat- 
ural bent  of  a  poetic  mind  is  subordinated  to   labor 


Dangers 
of  a  sure 
market. 


294 


OLIVER   WENDELL  HOLMES. 


"  The  Pro- 
fessor at 
the  Break- 
fast-Ta- 
ble," 1859. 


"  The  Poet 
at  the 
Breakfast- 
Table," 
i873. 


"  Elsie 

Venner" 

1861. 


"The 
Guardian 
Angel," 
1867. 


that  is  best  paid.  The  hope,  patience,  aspiration  that 
should  produce  a  masterpiece  are  cast  aside.  If  there 
be  a  general  advance  it  is  monotonous,  and  at  the 
expense  of  individual  genius.  My  deduction  is  that 
matter  supplied  regularly  for  a  persistent  market, 
though  of  a  high  order  of  journey-work,  is  not  im- 
properly designated  by  that  name. 

The  Professor  is  written  somewhat  in  the  manner 
of  Sterne,  yet  without  much  artifice.  The  story  of 
Iris  is  an  interwoven  thread  of  gold.  The  poems  in 
this  book  are  inferior  to  those  of  the  Autocrat,  but 
its  author  here  and  there  shows  a  gift  of  drawing 
real  characters ;  the  episode  of  the  Little  Gentleman 
is  itself  a  poem,  —  its  close  very  touching,  though  im- 
itated from  the  death-scene  in  Tristram  Shandy.  The 
Poet  at  the  Breakfast-Table,  written  some  years  after,  is 
of  a  more  serious  cast  than  its  predecessors,  chiefly 
devoted  to  Holmes's  peculiar  mental  speculations  and 
his  fluent  gossip  on  books  and  learning.  He  makes 
his  rare  old  pundit  a  liberal  thinker,  clearly  of  the 
notion  that  a  high  scholarship  leads  to  broader  views. 
I  do  not  think  he  would  banish  Greek  from  a  college 
curriculum;  but  if  he  should,  the  Old  Master  would 
cry  out  upon  him.  Between  the  second  and  third 
works  of  this  series,  his  two  novels  had  appeared,  — 
curious  examples  of  what  a  clever  observer  can  do 
by  way  of  fiction  in  the  afternoon  of  life.  As  con- 
ceptions, these  were  definite  and  original,  as  much  so 
as  Hawthorne's ;  but  that  great  romancer  would  have 
presented  in  a  far  more  dramatic  and  imaginative 
fashion  an  Elsie  Venner,  tainted  with  the  ophidian 
madness  that  so  vexed  her  human  soul,  —  a  Myrtle 
Hazard,  inheriting  the  trace  of  Indian  savagery  at 
war  with  her  higher  organization.  The  somewhat 
crude   handling   of   these   tales    betrays  the  fact  that 


AN  INDEPENDENT  THINKER. 


295 


the  author  was  not  trained  by  practice  in  the  nove- 
list's art.  But  they  have  the  merit  of  coming  down 
to  fact  with  an  exhibition  of  common,  often  vulgar, 
e very-day  life  in  the  country  towns  of  Massachusetts. 
This,  and  realistic  drawings  of  sundry  provincial  types, 
Holmes  produces  in  a  manner  directly  on  the  way  to 
the  subsequent  evolution  of  more  finished  works,  like 
Howells's  "A  Modern  Instance"  and  "The  Undis- 
covered Country."  Meanwhile  he  verifies  his  birth- 
right by  adapting  these  narratives  to  the  debate  on 
inherited  tendency,  limited  responsibility,  and  freedom 
of  the  will.  On  the  whole,  the  novels  and  the  Auto- 
crat volumes  were  indigenous  works,  in  plot  and  style 
behind  the  deft  creations  of  our  day,  but  with  their 
writer's  acumen  everywhere  conspicuous.  If  their  sci- 
ence and  suggestion  now  seem  trite,  it  must  be 
owned  that  the  case  was  opposite  when  they  were 
written,  and  that  ideas  now  familiar  were  set  afloat  in 
this  way.  Little  of  our  recent  literature  is  so  fresh, 
relatively  to  our  period,  as  these  books  were  in  con- 
sideration of  their  own.  As  Holmes's  humor  had  re- 
laxed the  grimness  of  a  Puritan  constituency,  so  his 
prose  satire  did  much  to  liberalize  their  clerical  sys- 
tem. This  was  not  without  some  wrath  and  objurga- 
tion on  the  part  of  the  more  rigid  clergy  and  laity 
alike,  and  at  times  worked  to  the  disadvantage  of  the 
satirist  and  his  publishers.  The  situation  now  seems 
far  away  and  amusing:  equally  so,  the  queer  audac- 
ity of  his  off-hand  pronunciamentos  upon  the  gravest 
themes.  He  was  responsible,  I  fear,  for  a  very  airy 
settlement  of  distracting  social  problems,  to  his  own 
satisfaction  and  that  of  a  generation  of  half-informed 
readers ;  for  getting  ready  sanction  to  his  postulate  of 
a  Brahmin  caste,  and  leading  many  a  Gifted  Hopkins 
to   set   up   for  its   representative.     Yet   his   dialogues 


Realistic 
prototypes. 


A  shaking 
of  the  dry 

bofies. 


296 


OLIVER    WENDELL  HOLMES. 


Holmes's 
later  work. 


A  ddress 
on  Emer- 
son (Mass. 
Hist. 
Soc.\  1882. 


and  stories  are  in  every  way  the  expression  of  a  stim- 
ulating personage,  their  author,  —  a  frank  display  of 
the  Autocrat  himself.  If  one  would  learn  how  to  be 
his  own  Boswell,  these  five  books  are  naive  examples 
of  a  successful  American  method. 

Holmes's  mental  fibre,  sturdier  with  use,  shows  to 
advantage  in  a  few  poems,  speeches,  and  prose  essays 
of  his  later  years.  These  illustrate  the  benefits  to  an 
author  of  having,  in  Quaker  diction,  a  concern  upon 
him;  each,  like  the  speech  "On  the  Inevitable  Crisis," 
is  the  outflow  of  personal  conviction,  or,  like  "  Ho- 
meopathy vs.  Allopathy,"  "The  Physiology  of  Versifi- 
cation," etc.,  the  discussion  of  a  topic  in  which  he 
takes  a  special  interest.  Jonathan  Edwards  he  had 
epitomized  in  verse  :  — 

"  the  salamander  of  divines. 
A  deep,  strong  nature,  pure  and  undefiled ; 
Faith,  strong  as  his  who  stabbed  his  sleeping  child." 

The  notable  prose  essay  on  Edwards  excites  a  wish 
that  he  oftener  had  found  occasion  to  indulge  his 
talent  for  analytic  characterization.  He  has  few  su- 
periors in  discernment  of  a  man's  individuality,  how- 
ever distinct  that  individuality  may  be  from  his  own. 
Emerson,  for  example,  was  a  thinker  and  poet  whose 
chartered  disciples  scarcely  would  have  selected 
Holmes  as  likely  to  proffer  a  sympathetic  or  even  ob- 
jective transcript  of  him.  Yet,  when  the  time  came, 
Holmes  was  equal  to  the  effort.  He  presented  with 
singular  clearness,  and  with  an  epigrammatic  genius 
at  white  heat,  if  not  the  esoteric  view  of  the  Concord 
Plotinus,  at  least  what  could  enable  an  audience  to 
get  at  the  mould  of  that  serene  teacher  and  make 
some  fortunate  surmise  of  the  spirit  that  ennobled  it. 
I  do  not  recall  a  more  faithful  and  graphic  outside 
portrait.     True,  it  was  done  by  an  artist  who  applies 


PIQUANT  ORIGINALITY. 


297 


the  actual  eye,  used  for  corporal  vision,  to  the  elusive 
side  of  things,  and  who  thinks  little  too  immaterial 
for  the  test  of  reason  and  science,  —  who  looks,  we 
might  say,  at  unexplored  tracts  by  sunlight  rather 
than  starlight.  But  it  sets  Emerson  before  us  in  both 
his  noonday  and  sundown  moods ;  in  his  character  as 
a  town-dweller,  and  also  as  when  "he  looked  upon 
this  earth  very  much  as  a  visitor  from  another  planet 
would  look  on  it."  With  no  waste  words,  the  poet's 
walk,  talk,  bearing,  and  intellect  are  illustrated  by  a 
series  of  images,  and  in  a  style  so  vehicular  as  to  de- 
serve unusual  praise.  Before  the  appearance  of  Dr. 
Holmes's  full  treatise  on  the  theme,  I  read  this  Bos- 
ton address  and  suspected  that  in  understanding  of 
the  Emersonian  cult  he  was  not  behind  its  votaries. 
His  acceptance  of  it  may  be  another  thing,  depend- 
ing, like  his  religion,  upon  the  cast  of  his  own  na- 
ture. 

Many  were  surprised  to  find  Mr.  Arnold  rating 
Emerson,  as  a  writer,  below  Montaigne.  The  latter, 
however  rare  and  various,  depended  largely  in  his 
essays  on  citations  from  the  ancients,  —  in  fact,  from 
writers  of  every  grade  and  period  j  while  of  Emerson's 
infrequent  borrowing  it  may  be  said  that  his  para- 
phrase often  is  worth  more  than  the  original,  and 
that  otherwise  each  of  his  fruitful  sentences  contains 
some  epigram,  or  striking  thought,  illuminated  by  a 
flash  of  insight  and  power.  Holmes,  among  our 
poets,  is  another  original  writer,  but  his  prose  is  a 
setting  for  brilliants  of  a  different  kind;  his  shrewd 
sayings  are  bright  with  native  metaphor  j  he  is  a 
proverb-maker,  some  of  whose  words  are  not  without 
wings.  When  he  ranges  along  the  line  of  his  tastes 
and  studies,  we  find  him  honestly  bred.  Plato  and 
the    Stagirite,  the    Elzevir  classics,  the  English  essay- 


Holmes, 
as  an 
epigram- 
matist and 
proverb- 
maker. 


298 


OLIVER    WENDELL  HOLMES. 


A  believ- 
er in  the 
Reign  of 
Law. 


Conserva- 
tism. 


Royalty. 


ists,  the  fathers  of  the  healing  art,  must  be  in  sight 
on  his  shelves,  even  though 

"the  damp  offspring  of  the  modern  press 
Flaunts  on  his  table  with  its  pictured  dress." 

But  his  proper  study  is  man,  the  regard  of  people 
and  movements  close  at  hand.  Somewhat  distrustful 
of  the  "inner  light,"  he  stands  squarely  upon  obser- 
vation, experience,  induction  j  yet  at  times  is  so  vol- 
atile a  theorist  that  one  asks  how  much  of  his  saying 
is  conviction,  and  how  much  mirth  or  whim.  His 
profession  has  put  him  on  the  alert  for  natural  ten- 
dency, in  the  belief  that  fortune  goes  by  inheritance. 
Crime  and  virtue  are  physically  foreordained.  He 
takes  unkindly  to  sentimental  attempts  at  reform. 
His  temper  and  training  so  largely  affect  his  writings 
that  the  latter  scarcely  can  be  criticised  from  the 
merely  literary  point  of  view.  Holmes's  conservatism, 
then,  goes  well  enough  with  a  poet  of  the  old  regime, 
»and  with  the  maker  of  light  satires  and  well-bred 
verse.  In  these  the  utterance  of  a  radical  would  be 
as  out  of  keeping  as  Brown  of  Osawatomie  in  a 
court-suit.  There  is  no  call  for  diatribes  on  his  lack 
of  sympathy  with  the  Abolitionists,  with  the  transcen- 
dentalists,  with  new  schools  of  medicine  and  art. 
What  has  this  to  do  with  the  service  of  our  gallant 
and  amiable  chanteur  ?  He  sticks  to  his  own  like  the 
wearer  of  "  The  Entailed  Hat."  Innovation  savors 
ill  to  his  nostril ;  yet  we  feel  that  if  brought  face  to 
face  with  a  case  of  wrong  or  suffering,  his  action 
would  be  prompted  by  a  warm  heart  and  as  swift  as 
any  enthusiast  could  desire.  When  the  Civil  War 
broke  out,  this  conservative  poet,  who  had  taken  little 
part  in  the  agitation  that  preceded  it,  shared  in  every 
way  the  spirit  and  duties  of   the  time.     None  of  our 


ANCESTRAL   FEELING. 


299 


poets  wrote   more  stirring  war  lyrics  during   the  con- 
flict, none   has  been  more   national  so  far  as  loyalty, 
in  the  Websterian  sense,  to  our  country  and  her  em- 
blems  is  concerned.     He    always   has   displayed    the 
simple  instinctive  patriotism  of  the  American  minute- 
man.     He   may  or  may  not   side  with  his   neighbors, 
but  he  is  for  the  nation  3  purely  republican,  if  scarcely 
democratic.     His  pride  is  not  of  English,  but  of  long 
American  descent.     The  roundheads  of  the  old  coun- 
try were  the  cavaliers  of   the  new,  —  a  band  of  unti- 
tled worthies  moving  off  to  found  clans  of  their  own. 
"Other  things   being    equal,"  the   doctor  does   prefer 
"a  man  of   family."     He   goes  "for  the   man  with  a 
gallery   of    family    portraits    against   the   one   with   a 
twenty-five  cent  daguerreotype,"  unless  he  finds  "that 
the  latter  is  the  better  of  the  two."     Better,  he  thinks, 
accept    asphyxia   than    a    mesalliance,    that    lasts    fifty 
years  to   begin  with,  and   then   passes  down  the   line 
of  descent.     Even  our  "  chryso-aristocracy  "  he  thinks 
is   bettered   by   the    process   which   secures    to    those 
"who  can  afford  the  extreme  •  luxury  of   beauty"  the 
finest  specimens  of   "the  young  females  of  each  suc- 
cessive  season."     Thus   far   our  sacerdotal   celebrant 
of  genealogies  and  family-trees.     It  is  likely  that   he 
takes  more   interest   than   his  compeers   in  the   Proc. 
Mass.  Hist.  Soc.     But  he  represents  his  section  within 
these  limits  as  strictly  as  the  poet  of  the  library,  the 
poet  of   the  new  and  radical  upper  class,  the  fervent 
poet  of  liberty  and  exaltation,— or  even  as  Emerson, 
that  provincial   citizen   of   the   world   at   large.     Our 
Eastern  group  of   poets  is  unique  \  we  shall  have  no 
other  of   one  caste  and  section  so  distinct  in  its  sep- 
arate  personages.      The   Puritan   strain   in    Holmes's 
blood   was    kept    pure    in   the    secluded    province    of 
Connecticut,  where  the  stern  Calvinism  of  the  migra- 


A  true 

Neiv-Eng- 

lander. 


300 


OLIVER    WENDELL  HOLMES. 


Pr.  Coles. 


Holmes's 
personal 
(harm  and 
magnet- 
ism. 


tion  yet  holds  sway.  Another  beloved  physician,  Dr. 
Abraham  Coles,  —  our  best  translator  of  the  Latin 
Hymns,  and  the  author  of  "  The  Microcosm,"  "  The 
Evangel,"  and  other  poems  and  paraphrases  in  the 
same  last-century  verse  that  we  have  been  consider- 
ing, —  also  is  but  a  strayed  inheritor,  as  his  the- 
ology and  pentameters  unite  in  showing,  of  the  colo- 
nial type.  Dr.  Holmes  stands  for  the  ancestral  feeling 
as  squarely  as  he  refutes  the  old  belief ;  and  it  is 
well  enough  that  such  a  poet  should  be  the  minstrel 
of  established  feasts,  and  loyal  to  his  class,  rather 
than  the  avatar  of  new  classes  and  conditions.  He 
is  of  Cambridge  and  Beacon  Hill,  and  in  point  of 
style,  usage,  social  life,  will  maintain  his  ground  with 
rhyme  and  banter,  —  small  swords  allowed  the  Ru- 
perts of  to-day.  Otherwise  he  gives  his  judgment 
free  scope,  and  no  superstition  trammels  the  logic  of 
his  inquisitive  mind.  It  has  required  some  indepen- 
dence for  a  man  of  letters,  the  friend  of  Lowell  and 
Emerson,  to  be  a  Tory,  and  for  a  trimontane  poet  to 
be  a  progressive  and  speculative  thinker. 

There  is  an  unconscious  sense  of  the  artistic  in  the 
self-differentiation  of  social  life.  It  organizes  a  stage 
performance ;  each  one  makes  himself  auxiliary  to  the 
whole  by  some  dramatic  instinct  that  loyally  accepts 
the  part  allotted.  Holmes  has  filled  that  of  hereditary 
chamberlain,  the  staff  never  leaving  his  hand,  and  has 
performed  its  functions  with  uncommon  ardor  and 
distinction.  It  would  not  be  strange  if  those  who 
often  have  seen  at  their  ceremonies  this  "fellow  of 
infinite  jest,  of  most  excellent  fancy,"  appreciate  less 
than  others  the  strength  of  his  ripest  years.  The 
younger  men  who  gathered  to  pay  him  their  tributes 
on  his  seventieth  birthday  felt  that  if  he  did  not  sing 
at  his  own  fete  his  thought  might  well  be  :  — 


'THE  LAST  READER: 


30I 


— "  You  are  kind  ;  may  your  tribe  be  increased, 
But  at  this  I  can  give  you  such  odds  if  I  will ! " 

He  did  sing,  and  the  mingled  gayety  and  tender- 
ness of  the  song  made  it,  as  was  fitting,  one  of  his 
sweetest.  The  occasion  itself  mellowed  his  voice,  and 
a  mere  fancy  has  not  often  played  more  lightly  around 
the  edge  of  feeling  than  when  he  said  :  — 

"As  on  the  gauzy  wings  of  fancy  flying 

From  some  far  orb  I  track  our  watery  sphere, 

Home  of  the  struggling,  suffering,  doubting,  dying, 

The  silvered  globule  seems  a  glistening  tear." 

Six  more  years  have  been  added  to  the  youth  of 
his  old  age,  and  in  them,  if  not  so  prolific  as  once,  he 
has  given  us  some  of  his  neatest  work  in  verse  and 
prose.  These  efforts  have  not  died  with  the  occasions 
that  called  them  out.  Their  beauty,  it  is  true,  took 
on  increase  by  the  manner  in  which  the  author  suited 
his  action  to  his  word.  The  youth,  who  has  heard 
this  last  of  the  recitationists  deliver  one  of  his  poems, 
will  recall  in  future  years  the  fire  and  spirit  of  a  vet- 
eran whose  heart  was  in  his  work,  who  reads  a  stanza 
with  the  poetic  inflection  that  no  elocutionist  can 
equal,  who  with  it  gives  you  so  much  of  himself  —  the 
sparkling  eye,  the  twinkling  by-play  of  the  mouth,  the 
nervous  frame  on  tip-toe  in  chase  of  imagery  unleashed 
and  coursing.  Such  a  poet  lifts  the  glow  and  fancy 
of  the  moment  into  the  region  of  art,  but  of  the  art 
which  must  be  enacted  to  bring  out  its  full  effect, 
and  in  which  no  actor  save  the  artist  himself  can 
satisfactorily  essay  the  single  role. 


His  gift  of 

delivery. 


302 


OLIVER    WENDELL  HOLMES. 


Final  im- 
pressions 
of  his 
verse  and 
prose. 


IV. 

If  the  question  is  asked,  Would  the  verse  of  Doc- 
tor Holmes  be  held  in  so  much  favor  if  he  had  not 
confirmed  his  reputation  by  prose  replete  with  poetic 
humor  and  analogy  ?  the  fairest  answer  may  be  in  the 
negative.  Together,  his  writings  surely  owe  their 
main  success  to  an  approximate  exhibition  of  the  au- 
thor himself.  Where  the  man  is  even  more  lively 
than  his  work,  the  public  takes  kindly  to  the  one  and 
the  other.  The  jester  is  privileged  though  in  the  court 
of  art  and  letters ;  yet  if  one  could  apply  to  Holmes 
—  the  jester,  homilist,  and  man  of  feeling  —  his  own 
process,  we  should  have  analysis  indeed.  Were  the 
theme  assigned  to  himself,  we  should  have  an  inimi- 
tably honest  setting  forth  of  his  merits  and  foibles, 
from  this  keen. anatomist  of  mind  and  body,  this  smile- 
begetter,  this  purveyor  to  so  many  feasts.  As  a  New 
Englander  he  long  ago  was  awarded  the  highest  sec- 
tional praise,  —  that  of  being,  among  all  his  tribe,  the 
cutest.  His  cleverness  and  versatility  bewilder  out- 
side judges.  Is  he  a  genius?  By  all  means.  And 
in  what  degree  ?  His  prose,  for  the  most  part,  is  pe- 
culiarly original.  His  serious  poetry  scarcely  has  been 
the  serious  work  of  his  life ;  but  in  his  specialty,  verse 
suited  to  the  frolic  or  pathos  of  occasions,  he  has 
given  us  much  of  the  best  delivered  in  his  own  time, 
and  has  excelled  all  others  in  delivery.  Both  his 
strength  and  weakness  lie  in  his  genial  temper  and 
his  brisk,  speculative  habit  of  mind.  For,  though  al- 
most the  only  modern  poet  who  has  infused  enough 
spirit  into  table  and  rostrum  verse  to  make  it  worth 
recording,  his  poetry  has  appealed  to  the  present  rather 
than  the  future;  and,  again,  he  has  too  curious  and 
analytic  a  brain  for  purely  artistic  work.     Of  Holmes 


POET  OF  MANNERS  AND   THE   TIME. 


303 


as  a  satirist,  which  it  is  not  unusual  to  call  him,  I 
have  said  but  little.  His  metrical  satires  are  of  the 
amiable  sort  that  debars  him  from  kinsmanship  with 
the  Juvenals  of  old,  or  the  Popes  and  Churchills  of 
more  recent  times.  There  is  more  real  satire  in  one 
of  Hosea  Biglow's  lyrics  than  in  all  our  laughing  phi- 
losopher's irony,  rhymed  and  unrhymed.  Yet  he  is 
a  keen  observer  of  the  follies  and  chances  which  sa- 
tire makes  its  food.  Give  him  personages,  reminis- 
cences, manners,  to  touch  upon,  and  he  is  quite  at 
home.  He  may  not  reproduce  these  imaginatively,  in 
their  stronger  combinations;  but  the  Autocrat  makes 
no  unseemly  boast  when  he  says  :  "  It  was  in  talking 
of  Life  that  we  came  together.  I  thought  I  knew 
something  about  that,  that  I  could  speak  or  write 
about  it  to  some  purpose."  Let  us  consider,  then, 
that  if  Holmes  had  died  young,  we  should  have  missed 
a  choice  example  of  the  New  England  fibre  which 
strengthens  while  it  lasts;  that  he  has  lived  to-  round 
a  personality  that  will  be  traditional  for  at  least  the 
time  granted  to  one  or  two  less  characteristic  worthies 
of  revolutionary  days  ;  that  a  few  of  his  lyrics  already 
belong  to  our  select  anthology,  and  one  or  two  of  his 
books  must  be  counted  as  striking  factors  in  what 
"twentieth-century  chroniclers  will  term  (and  here  is 
matter  for  reflection)  the  development  of  early  Amer- 
ican literature. 


His  harp 
"  the  harp 
of  Life.-" 


CHAPTER    IX. 


JAMES   RUSSELL   LOWELL. 


A  typical 
man  of 
letters. 


Represent- 
ing, also, 
A  merican 


I 


N  a  liberal  sense,  and  somewhat  as  Emerson  stands 
for  American  thought,  the  poet  Lowell  has  become 
our  representative  man  of  letters.  Not  as  our  most 
laborious  scholar,  though  of  a  rich  scholarship,  and 
soundly  versed  in  branches  which  he  has  chosen  to 
follow.  Not  as  an  indomitable  writer,  yet,  when  he 
writes,  from  whom  else  are  we  as  sure  to  receive  what 
is  brilliant  and  original  ?  Nor  yet  chiefly  as  a  poet, 
in  spite  of  the  ideality,  the  feeling,  the  purpose,  and 
the  wit  that  belong  to  his  verse  and  that  first  brought 
him  into  reputation.  But,  whatsoever  the  conjunction 
that  has  enabled  Mr.  Lowell  to  reach  and  maintain 
his  typical  position,  we  feel  that  he  holds  it,  and,  on 
the  whole,  ought  to  hold  it.  His  acquirements  and 
versatile  writings,  the  conditions  of  his  life,  his  inter- 
national honors,  the  mould  of  the  man,  his  speech, 
bearing,  and  the  spirit  of  his  whole  work,  have  given 
him  a  peculiar  distinction,  and  this  largely  without  his 
thought  or  seeking.  Such  a  nimbus  does  not  form 
around  one  who  summons  it :  it  glows  and  gathers 
almost  without  his  knowledge,  —  and  not  at  once,  but, 
like  the  expression  of  a  noble  face,  after  long  expe- 
rience and  service. 

I  have~3poken  of  one   poet  as  excelling  others   in 
the  adroitness  of  a  man  of  the  world.     Lowell's  qual- 


REPUBLICAN  CULTURE. 


305 


ities  secure  him  honor  and  allies  without  the  need 
of  adroitness.  He  is  regarded  not  only  as  araan^of 
letters,  but  as  a  fine  exemplar  of  culturef  and  of  a 
culture  so  generous  as  to  be  thought  supra-American 
by  those  observers  who,  while  pronouncing  him  a  citi- 
zen of  the  world,  are  careful  to  exclude  this  country 
from  his  range.  Professor  Dowden,  for  instance,  says  : 
"  Taken  as  a  whole,  the  works  of  Lowell  do  not  mir- 
ror the  life,  the  thoughts,  and  passions  of  the  nation. 
They  are  works,  as  it  were,  of  an  English  poet  who 
has  become  a  naturalized  citizen  of  the  United  States ; 
who  admires  the  institutions  and  has  faith  in  the  ideas 
of  America,  but  who  cannot  throw  off  his  allegiance 
to  the  old  country  and  its  authorities."  But  here  is 
a  manifest  assumption.  Doubtless,  Lowell's  mirror 
does  not  reflect  Dr.  Dowden's  conception  of  the  life, 
the  thoughts,  and  passions  of  this  nation,  but  that 
conception,  formed  at  such  a  distance,  might  be  re- 
vised upon  a  close  approach./ In  the  poet's  writings 
we  find  the  life  and  passion^oF  New  England,  to  a 
verity,  and  the  best  thought  of  our  people  at  large. 
For,  when  I  say  that  he  is  a  type  of  American  culture, 
I  mean  of  republican  culture,  and  nothing  more  or  less. 
Those  who  hold  to  the  republican  idea  believe  that 
its  value  is  to  be  found  in  its  levelling  tendency  ;  by 
which  I  do  not  mean  a  general  reduction  to  the  low- 
est caste,  but  the  gradual  elevation  of  a  multitude 
to  the  standard  which  individuals  have  reached,  — 
among  them  so  many  of  the  writing  craft,  from  Frank- 
lin's generation  to  our  ownTjTln  this  respect  I  do  not, 
of  course,  mention  Lowell's  position  as  distinctive,  — 
the  names  of  other  scholars  and  writers  instantly  come 
to  mind,  —  nor  have  our  men  of  culture  been  confined 
to  any  guild  or  profession.  Marshall  and  Story, 
Pinkney,  Wirt,  Winthrop,  Sumner  and  Bayard,  jurists, 
20 


culture  at 
its  best. 


Dowden's 
"  Studies 
in  Liter a~ 
ture," 
p.  4J2. 


The  Re- 
publican 
idea,  viz. 


To  ad- 
vance the 
general 
grade  of 
Culture, 
equally 
with  that 
of  mate- 
rial wel- 
fare. 


306 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 


LowelPs 
special 
guality 
and  stand- 
ing. 


Catholic- 
ity. 


orators,  and  statesmen,  —  soldiers,  merchants,  artisans, 
Americans  of  every  class,  —  have  shown  that  culture 
is  a  plant  that  thrives  in  a  republic  no  less  than  under 
royal  care.  Their  number  is  increasing;  the  average 
grade  is  advanced.  If  this  were  not  so,  republican- 
ism would  be  a  failure :  in  this  matter  it  is  on  trial  no 
less  than  in  its  ability  to  promote  the  establishment 
of  first-class  museums,  libraries,  academies,  even  with- 
out governmental  aid. 

We  count  Lowell,  among  others,  as  a  specimen  not 
of  foreign,  but  of  home,  culture,  and  especially  of  our 
Eastern  type.  His  life  shows  what  the  New  England 
training,  not  always  so  fortunate,  can  do  for  a  man 
of  genius.  And  thus,  even  aside  from  his  writings, 
he  is  a  person  of  note.  The  tributes  frequently  paid 
him  would  of  themselves  keep  his  name  before  us. 
Many  of  his  sayings,  like  those  of  Emerson,  are  a 
portion  of  our  usual  discourse  and  reference,  and  the 
people  have  taken  some  of  his  lyrics  faithfully  to  heart. 
He  has  written  one  work  that  has  become  a  classic. 
Whether  as  a  poet  and  critic,  or  as  a  man  of  affairs, 
of  rare  breeding  and  the  healthiest  moral  tone,  Lowell 
is  one  of  whom  it  may  be  affirmed,  in  the  words  ap- 
plied to  another,  that  a  thing  derives  more  weight 
from  the  fact  that  he  has  said  it.  Are  we  conscious, 
then,  of  having  in  view  a  man  better  than  his  best 
writings  ?  But  this  may  be  said  of  many  authors,  and 
there  must  be,  at  all  events,  a  live  personality  behind 
good  work. 

Lowell's  sense  of  this,  and  of  the  strength  and  ful- 
ness of  existence,  keep  him  void  of  conceit..  He  often 
has  seemed  impatient  of  his  art,  half-ready  to  cry  out 
upon  it,  lest  it  lead  him  from  green  fields  and  forests, 
from  the  delight  of  life  itself.  He  is  not  swift  to 
magnify  his  office  above  the  heroic  action  of  other  mea 


HIS  BREEDING. 


307 


This  catholicity  is  rare  among  poets  and  artists,  whose 
dearest  failing  is  a  lack  of  concern  for  people  or 
things  not  associated  with  their  own  pursuits.  On  the 
other  hand,  poetry  is  the  choicest  expression  of  hu- 
man life^  and  the  poet  who  does  not  revere  his  art 
and  believe  in  its  sovereignty  is  not  born  to  wear  the 
purple.  Lowell,  in  fortunate  seasons,  goes  back  from 
life  to  song  with  new  vigor  and  wisdom,  and  with  a 
loyalty  strengthened  by  experiences.  After  all,  the 
man  dies,  while  his  imaginative  works  may  survive 
even  the  record  of  his  name.  Therefore  the  work  is 
the  essential  thing ;  and  Lowell's  work,  above  all,  is 
so  imbued  with  his  individuality,  that  none  can  over- 
look the  relations  of  the  one  to  the  other,  or  fail,  in 
comprehending  his  poetry,  to  enter  into  the  make  and 
spirit  of  the  poet  himself. 


II. 

Mr.  Underwood  has  given  some  account  of  Low- 
ell's ancestry,  and  of  the  conditions  which  led  to  the 
birth  and  breeding  of  a  poet.  We  have  a  picture  of 
the  Cambridge  manor,  Elmwood,  —  a  home  not  want- 
ing in  the  relics  of  an  old  -  time  family,  —  portraits, 
books,  and  things  of  art.  Lowell's  father,  and  his 
father's  father,  were  clergymen,  well-read,  bearing  hon- 
ored names  ;  his  mother,  a  gifted  woman,  the  mistress 
of  various  languages,  and  loving  the  old  English  songs 
and  ballads,  —  no  wonder  that  three  of  her  children 
came  to  be  authors,  and  this  one,  the  youngest,  a  fa- 
mous citizen  and  poet.  It  is  not  hard  to  fill  in  these 
outlines  with  something  of  the  circumstance  that,  as  I 
pointed  out  in  the  case  of  Mrs.  Browning,  fore-ordains 
the  training  of  a  genius ;  that  supplies,  I  repeat,  the 
means  of   its  self-training,   since  the  imagination   de- 


Musa 
Regina. 


James 
Russell 
Lowell : 
born  in 
Cam- 
bridge, 
Mass., 
Feb.  22, 
1819. 


Cfi.  "  Vic- 
torian 
Poets"  : 
p.  118. 


3o8 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 


Entered 

,  Ff*r7tar<L 

in  1834. 


Bent. 


Surround- 
ings. 


Old  Style 
vs.  New. 


rives  its  sustenance  like  a  plant,  selecting  and  assim- 
ilating for  itself.  All  it  needs  is  food,  atmosphere,  a 
place  to  grow.  In  these  Lowell  was  exceptionally 
favored,  under  the  influence  of  local  and  family  tra- 
ditions, the  home-culture,  the  method  of  his  father,  and 
the  taste  of  the  mother  from  whom  he  inherited  his 
bent  toward  letters  and  song. 

His  college  course  made  little  change  in  this  way  of 
growth.  He  might  fail  of  advantages  to  be  gained 
from  drill  and  drudgery;  but  was  sure  to  extend  his 
reading  in  the  direction  of  his  natural  tastes,  until  ac- 
quainted with  many  literatures.  His  subsequent  study 
of  the  law  probably  added  the  logical  discipline  that 
enables  one  to  formulate  ideas.  But  any  voice  that 
would  restrict  him  to  his  profession  must  have  fallen 
"vainlier  than  the  hen's  to  her  false  chickens  in  the 
pool."  Instinct,  judgment,  everything,  pointed  to  let- 
ters as  his  calling.  The  period  of  his  start,  and  his 
father's  literary  tastes,  are  indicated  by  his  avowal  that 
he  was  brought  up  "  in  the  old  superstition  "  that  Pope 
"  was  the  greatest  poet  that  ever  lived."  This  would 
account  for  his  escape  to  the  school  of  beauty  and 
romance ;  just  as  the  repression  of  a  clerical  sur- 
rounding may  have  had  much  to  do  with  his  early 
liberalism  in  politics  and  theology. 

It  seems  that  the  light-hearted  Cambridge  student 
was  eager  for  all  books  except  those  of  the  curricu- 
lum, and  troubled  himself  little  as  to  mathematics  and 
other  prosaic  branches.  This  was  quite  in  accordance 
with  precedent,  teste  Landor  or  Shelley,  yet  I  doubt 
not  that  he  was  more  than  once  sorry  for  it  in  after 
years.  One  may  assume,  however,  that  he  passed  for 
what  he  was,  or  promised  to  be,  with  the  Faculty, 
and  became  something  of  an  oracle  among  his  mates. 
There  was  more  eagerness  then,  at  Harvard,  than  now  \ 


<A    YEAR'S  LIFE. 


309 


the  young  fellows  were  not  ashamed  to  wear  their 
hearts  upon  their  sleeves.  The  gospel  of  indifferent- 
ism  had  not  been  preached.  The  words  "  clever  "  and 
"  well-equipped "  now  seem  to  express  our  highest 
good  ;  we  avoid  sentimentalism,  but  nourish  less  that 
genius  which  thrives  in  youth  upon  hopefully  garnished 
food. 

Lowell  wrote  the  Class  Poem,  and  took  leave  to 
print  it,  being  under  discipline  at  the  time  appointed 
for  its  delivery.  Mr.  Sanborn  neatly  points  out  that 
it  abounded  in  conventional  satire  of  the  new-fangled 
reformers  whom  the  poet  was  soon  to  join.  As  a  law 
graduate,  he  shortly  clouded  his  professional  chances 
by  writing  for  the  Boston  "  Miscellany,"  and  issuing  a 
little  book  of  verse.  A  writer's  first  venture  is  apt  to 
be  a  novel  or  poem.  Should  he  grow  in  station,  it  be- 
comes rare,  or  valued  for  its  indications.  The  thin, 
pretty  volume,  A  Year's  Life,  does  show  traits  of  its 
author's  after-work,  but  not  so  distinctly  as  many  books 
of  the  kind.  Three  years  later  he  termed  its  con- 
tents, — 

"  the  firstlings  of  my  muse, 
Poor  windfalls  of  unripe  experience." 

But  three  years  are  a  long  time  in  the  twenties.  There 
are  a  few  ideal  passages  in  this  book,  and  some  that 
suggest  his  forming  tendencies.  It  was  inscribed  to 
"  Una,"  whom  he  aptly  might  have  called  Egeria,  for 
she  was  already  both  the  inspirer  and  the  sharer  of  his 
best  imaginings.  A  few  well-chosen  pieces  are  re- 
tained in  the  opening  division  of  Mr.  Lowell's  stand- 
ard collection.  Of  these,  "  Threnodia  "  is  a  good 
specimen  of  his  early  manner.  The  simple  and  natural 
lines  "With  a  Pressed  Flower"  are  in  contrast  with 
vaguer  portions  of  the  first  book,  and  have  a  charac- 
teristic thought  in  the  closing  stanza,  where  he  says 
of  flowers,  that 


"A  Poem 
recited  at 
Cam- 
bridge," 
1839. 


"A  Year's 

Life," 

1841. 


Maria 
White. 


3io 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 


Early 
range  and 
tendencies. 


"The 
Pioneer  " : 
ed.  by 
Lowell 
and  Rob- 
ert Carter. 


"Nature,  ever  kind  to  love, 
Hath  granted  them  the  same  sweet  tongue, 
Whether  with  German  skies  above, 
Or  here  our  granite  rocks  among." 

The  cullings  from  "A  Year's  Life,"  with  various 
and  riper  odes,  lyrics,  and  sonnets,  make  up  the  "  Early- 
Poems  "  of  his  latest  edition,  showing  his  range  at 
the  date  of  their  production. 

Some  of  the  longer  pieces  lack  compactness,  and 
betray  an  imagination  still  somewhat  nebulous.  "  The 
Sirens,"  "  Irene,"  "  My  Love,"  "  Rosaline,"  are  like 
the  first  poems  of  Tennyson,  then  a  risen  star.  There 
is  a  trace  of  Shelley  in  the  lines  "To  Perdita,  Sing- 
ing," and  "The  Moon."  "Allegra"  is  sweet,  direct, 
original.  The  sonnets  upon  reading  Wordsworth,  a 
sonnet  to  Spenser  (in  "  A  Year's  Life  "),  and  one  to 
Keats,  afford  hints  of  the  poet's  healthy  tastes.  Those 
to  Phillips  and  Giddings  prove  that  he  was  no  laggard 
in  the  unpopular  antislavery  movement.  As  to  other 
reforms,  it  is  plain  that  he  began  to  have  convictions, 
—  or,  at  least,  to  have  a  conviction  that  he  had  con- 
victions. "  The  Heritage"  and  "  A  Rich  Man's  Son  " 
were  taken  up  by  the  press,  and  are  still  found  in  our 
school-readers.  Lowell's  voice  was  for  independence, 
human  rights,  the  dignity  of  labor.  Some  of  the  love- 
poetry  is  exquisite.  Its  serenity  declares  that  no  other 
word  than  happiness  is  needed  for  the  history  of  the 
time  between  the  dates  of  his  first  and  second  books. 
To  be  sure,  he  set  himself  to  edit  The  Pioneer,  the 
conditions  being  so  adverse  that  poets  and  essayists 
who  now  should  make  the  fortune  of  a  magazine  could 
not  prolong  its  short  existence.  But  we  think  of  Low- 
ell as  enjoying  to  the  full  those  three  zestful  years,  — 
a  briefless  barrister,  perhaps,  yet  guarded  by  the  Muse, 
and   having   the    refined   companionship   of    the    girl 


MATURER    VERSE. 


3" 


whose  love  he  sought  and  won.  In  the  year  of  his 
marriage  to  Maria  White,  he  published  a  second  vol- 
ume, whose  contents,  with  other  verse  composed  be- 
fore "  Sir  Launfal,"  exhibit  his  poetic  genius  in  its 
fresh  maturity. 

The  "  Legend  of   Brittany,"  an   artistic  and   legen- 
dary poem,  was,  for  that  time,  quite  a  significant  pro- 
duction, so  much  so  that  Poe  said  it  was  "  the  noblest 
poem  yet  written   by  an  American."      It  commended 
itself  to  him  because,  unlike  some  of    Lowell's  verse, 
it  was  designed  for  poetry  and  nothing  else  —  it  is  not 
in   the  least  didactic.     And   that  Poe  said   this,   and 
meant  it,  shows   how  few  were  the  longer  poems  of 
merit  we  then  had  produced.    The  Legend  is  a  sweet, 
flowing  tale,   in   the   ottava   rima,  after  the  mode   of 
Keats   and   up  to  the   standard   of   Leigh   Hunt.     It 
needs  dramatic  force  in  the  climax,  but  is  simple  and 
delicately  finished.     A  still  better  piece  of  art-work  is 
"  Rhcecus,"  that  Greek  legend  of  the  wood-nymph  and 
the  bee.     The  poet  by  chance  subjected  himself,  and 
not  discreditably,  to  the  test  of  a  comparison  with  the 
most  bewitching  of  Landor's  Hellenics,  "  The  Hama- 
dryad."     Much  might  be  said,  in  view  of  these   two 
idyls,  upon   the  antique  and   modern   handlings  of   a 
theme.     Landor  worked  as   a   Grecian   might,   giving 
the   tale   in   chiselled  verse,  with   no   curious   regard 
for   its    teachings.      Its    beauty   is    enough    for  him, 
and  there  it  stands  —  a  Periclean  vase.     His  instinct 
became  a  conscious  method.      In   a  letter  to  Forster 
he  begs  him   to   amend   the  poem  by  striking  out  a 
bit  of  "  reflection  "  which   a  true   hamadryad   should 
*  cut  across  "  :  — 

"Why  should  the  beautiful 
(And  thou  art  beautiful)  disturb  the  source 
Whence  springs  all  beauty  ? " 


"  Poems," 
1844. 

"A  Le- 
gend of 
Brittany: 


Rhcecus? 
compared 
with  Lan- 
dor's  "Tht 
Hama- 
dryad." 


312 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 


The  an- 
tique and 
modern 
purposes 
contrasted. 


The  poet 
obeys  a 
"call" 


His  ear- 
nestness 
sincere. 


Mr.  Lowell's  "  Rhcecus  "  is  an  example,  of  the  mod- 
ern feeling.     Passages  such  as  that  beginning  :  — 

"A  youth  named  Rhcecus,  wandering  in  the  wood," 
are  simple  and  lovely ;  the  scene  where  Rhcecus,  play- 
ing dice,  rudely  treats  the  winged  messenger,  is  a  pic- 
ture equalling  the  best  of  Landor's.  But  the  story 
itself  is  preceded  by  a  moralizing  commentary,  and 
other  glosses  of  the  same  kind  are  here  and  there. 
The  whole  is  treated  as  an  allegory  conveying  a  les- 
son. The  wood-nymph  herself  draws  one,  tenderly 
and  sadly,  at  the  close :  — 

'"Alas  !'  the  voice  returned,  '  'tis  thou  art  blind, 
Not  I  unmerciful.     I  can  forgive, 
But  have  no  skill  to  heal  thy  spirit's  eyes; 
Only  the  soul  hath  power  o'er  itself.'  " 

This  method  confuses  the  beauty  of  the  poem, 
though  distinct  enough  in  purpose,  and  characteristic 
of  the  New  England  school. 

The  poet,  in  truth,  felt  himself  called  upon  for  secu- 
lar work.  With  all  his  love  of  beauty,  he  had  a  greater 
dread  of  dilettanteism.  The  air  was  full  of  "  progress," 
and  he  made  a  general  assay  of  the  new  thoughts  and 
enthusiasms.  Reform-verse  came  naturally  from  the 
young  idealist  portrayed  by  his  friend  Page.  The 
broad  collar  and  high -parted,  flowing  hair  set  off  a 
handsome,  eager  face,  with  the  look  of  Keats  and  the 
resolve  of  a  Brook-Farmer.  But  he  was  wholly  him- 
self, incapable  of  the  affectation  which  —  in  a  time 
when  poetry  is  not  the  first  choice  of  readers  —  mar- 
kets its  wares  by  posing  for  the  jest  and  zest  of  fash- 
ion, and  brings  into  contempt  the  grand  old  name  of 
poet  among  those  who  know  poetry  only  as  a  name. 
Affectation  and  self-seeking  in  art,  as  elsewhere,  are 
detestable.  All  the  genius  of  Byron,  in  a  romantic 
period,  could  not  atone   for  his  trace  of    the   former. 


PROGRESSIVE   TENDENCIES. 


3*3 


It  makes  no  difference  whether  the  affectation  be  one 
of  virility  or  of  refinement ;  the  self-seeking  is  apt  to 
be  that  of  the  author  or  artist  who  devotes  one  day  in 
the  month  to  work,  and  all  the  rest  to  advertising  it. 
You  may  see  his  outward  type  in  the  water-fly  Osric, 
of  whom  Hamlet  says  that  "  'tis  a  vice  to  know  him." 
Such  creatures  and  their  habits  are  the  breed  of  special 
times  —  men  with  some  bit  of  talent,  gaining  their 
paltry  ends,  and  sure  to  be  duly  classified  at  last.  And 
so  Osric,  as  Hamlet  disdainfully  perceives,  with  "  many 
more  of  the  same  breed  that  the  drossy  age  dotes  on," 
has  "only  got  the  tune  of  the  time  ...  a  kind 
of  yesty  collection,  which  carries  them  through  and 
through  the  most  fond  and  winnowed  opinions."  But 
Lowell,  I  say,  was  himself  alone,  wearing  his  Arcadian 
garb,  yet  hasting  to  throw  aside  his  crook  at  the 
sound  of  the  trumpet.  His  "  progressive  "  verse  often 
was  fuller  of  opinion  than  beauty,  of  eloquence  than 
passion.  Some  of  it  is  in  a  measure  which  reformers 
have  seemed  to  hit  upon  by  an  exasperating  instinct 
—  the  much-abused  verse  shown  at  its  best  in  "  Locks- 
ley  Hall."  With  the  typical  radical,  it  is  enough  to 
make  a  thing  wrong  that  it  is  accepted  by  a  majority. 
Lowell  found  himself  with  the  minority,  but  the  minor- 
ity then  chanced  to  be  the  party  of  a  future,  and,  in 
essentials,  wholly  right.  If  Whittier  and  himself,  like 
the  Lake  Poets  before  them,  became  didactic  through 
moral  earnestness,  it  none  the  less  aided  to  inspire 
them.  Their  verse  advanced  a  great  cause,  and,  as 
years  went  by,  grew  in  quality  —  perhaps  as  surely  as 
that  of  poets  who,  in  youth,  reject  all  but  artistic  con- 
siderations. 

Before  Lowell's  thought  and  imagination  had  gained 
their  richness,  he  had  to  contend  with  a  disproportion- 
ate flow  of   language,  if   using  forms  that  did  not  of 


Affecta- 
tion the 
bane  of 
art. 


LowelFs 
reform- 
verse. 


"Poems," 
1848  ;  and 
"  Poetical 
Works," 
2  v.,  1850. 


3H 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 


Diffuse-, 
ness. 

Frequent 
strength  of 
thought 
and  man- 


Eccentrici- 
ties of 
style. 


themselves  restrict  it.  "Prometheus,"  "Columbus," 
"A  Glance  Behind  the  Curtain,"  are  studies  upon 
massive  themes,  weakened  because  their  matter  is  not 
compactly  moulded.  Yet  the  poet  had  a  terse  art  of 
saying  things,  as  when  he  made  Cromwell  assert  that 

"New  times  demand  new  measures  and  new  men"; 
and  himself  said  :  — 

"They  are  slaves  who  dare  not  be 
In  the  right  with  two  or  three/' 

or,  similarly,  declared  for 

"One  faith  against  a  whole  earth's  unbelief, 
One  soul  against  the  flesh  of  all  mankind." 

His  manner  often  was  fine :  — 

"All  other  glories  are  as  falling  stars, 
But  universal  Nature  watches  theirs, 
Such  strength  is  won  by  love  of  human  kind." 

"The  moon  will  come  and  go 
With  her  monotonous  vicissitude." 

"The  melancholy  wash  of  endless  waves." 

His  analytic  turn  early  cropped  out  in  the  "  Studies 
for  Two  Heads,"  which  is  all  Lowell  —  as  one  now 
would  say.  The  poem  "  To  the  Past "  is  written  with 
more  circumstance  than  Bryant's,  but  the  latter  is  the 
more  imaginative.  To  indicate,  finally,  the  chief  res- 
ervation of  Mr.  Lowell's  admirers,  I  must  own  that 
these  poems  often  are  marked  with  technical  blem- 
ishes, from  which  even  his  later  verse  is  not  exempt. 
In  trying  both  to  express  his  conviction  and  to  find  a 
method  of  his  own,  he  betrayed  an  irregular  ear,  and 
a  voice  rare  in  quality,  but  not  wholly  to  be  relied 
upon.  He  had  a  way,  moreover,  of  "  dropping "  like 
his  own  bobolink,  of  letting  down  his  fine  passages 
with    odd  conceits,   mixed    metaphors,    and    licenses 


A   NATIVE  BUT  CAPRICIOUS  SONGSTER. 


3'5 


which  as  a  critic  he  would  not  overlook  in  another. 
To  all  this  add  a  knack  of  coining  uncouth  words  for 
special  tints  of  meaning,  when  there  are  good  enough 
counters  in  the  language  for  any  poet's  need.  Space 
can  be  more  agreeably  used  than  by  citing  examples 
of  these  failings,  which  a  reader  soon  discovers  for 
himself.  They  have  perplexed  the  poet's  friends  and 
teased  his  reviewers.  Although  such  defects  some- 
times bring  a  man's  work  nearer  to  us,  the  question  is 
as  to  their  influence  upon  its  permanent  value.  Verse 
may  be  faultily  faultless,  or  may  go  to  the  other  ex- 
treme. We  are  indebted,  as  usual,  to  Lowell  himself 
for  our  critical  test.  Writing  of  Wordsworth,  he  says 
that  "  the  work  must  surpass  the  material,"  and  refers 
to  "that  shaping  imagination  which  is  the  highest 
criterion  of  a  poet." 

It  is  a  labor  that  physics  pain  to  recall  the  verse 
by  which  he  gained  that  hold  upon  his  countrymen 
which  strengthens  through  lengthening  years.  The 
public  was  right  in  its  liking  for  "  The  Changeling," 
"  She  Came  and  Went,"  "  The  First  Snow-Fall,"  than 
which  there  are  few  more  touching  lyrics  of  the  affec- 
tions. "  The  Shepherd  of  Admetus  "  and  "  An  Inci- 
dent in  a  Railway  Car "  are  on  themes  which  moved 
the  poet  to  harmonize  his  taste  and  thought.  When 
called  upon,  as  he  supposed,  to  make  a  choice  between 
Taste  and  his  conception  of  Duty,  Taste  sometimes 
went  to  the  wall.  Doubtless,  he  grew  to  see  that  the 
line  of  Beauty  does  not  always  follow  Duty's  follower, 
and  that  the  surrender  of  the  former  itself  may  be  in 
the  nature  of  a  crime.  His  sense  never  was  more 
subtle,  his  taste  never  more  delightful,  than  in  the 
recent  and  flawless  stanzas  on  the  "  Phcebe."  The 
public  keeps  in  store  for  him  the  adage  of  the  wilful 
songster.     That  he  "  can  "  sing  was  discovered  at  the 


Lyrical 
beauty. 


316 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 


Lowell's 
theory  of 
song. 


outset.     One 
point :  — 


such   piece    as    "  Hebe "    decided    that 


"I  saw  the  twinkle  of  white  feet, 
I  saw  the  flash  of  robes  descending; 

Before  her  ran  an  influence  fleet 
That  bowed  my  heart  like  barley  bending." 

It   also    included  his    theory   of    song,  and    a   sound 
one :  — 

"Coy  Hebe  flies  from  those  that  woo, 
And  shuns  the  hands  would  seize  upon  her ; 

Follow  thy  life,  and  she  will  sue 
To  pour  for  thee  the  cup  of  honor." 

To  this  lesson  of  his  own  experience  he  recurs  again 
and  again  :  — 

"Whither?    Albeit  I  follow  fast, 
In  all  life's  circuit  I  but  find, 
Not  where  thou  art,  but  where  thou  wast, 
Sweet  beckoner,  more  fleet  than  wind ! 

All  of  thee  but  thyself  I  grasp ; 

I  seem  to  fold  thy  luring  shape, 
And  vague  air  to  my  bosom  clasp, 

Thou  lithe,  perpetual  Escape  !  " 

Like  other  poets  of  quality,  Lowell  has  found  the 
Muse,  between  her  inspirations,  a  coquette  and  evader. 
He  forms  his  rule  accordingly  :  — 

"  Now,  I  've  a  notion,  if  a  poet 
Beat  up  for  themes,  his  verse  will  show  it ; 
I  wait  for  subjects  that  hunt  me, 
By  day  or  night  won't  let  me  be, 
And  hang  about- me  like  a  curse, 
Till  they  have  made  me  into  verse." 

From  a  poet  who  does  this,  we  shall  get  flavor,  and, 
in  any  event,  the  best  of  himself.  Lowell's  career, 
telling  equally  of  use  and  song,  has  proved  the  wis« 
dom  of  his  admonitions  :  — 


POET  OF   THE   OPEN  AIR. 


317 


"  Harass  her  not ;  thy  heat  and  stir 
But  greater  coyness  breed  in  her; 

The  Muse  is  womanish,  nor  deigns 
Her  love  to  him  that  pules  and  plains; 

The  epic  of  a  man  rehearse, 
Be  something  better  than  thy  verse ; 
Make  thyself  rich,  and  then  the  Muse 
Shall  court  thy  precious  interviews, 
Shall  take  thy  head  upon  her  knee, 
And  such  enchantment  lilt  to  thee, 
That  thou  shalt  hear  the  life-blood  flow 
From  farthest  stars  to  grass-blades  low." 

To  which  one  may  add,  without  malice,  that  Mr.  Low- 
ell can  give  the  Muse  lessons  in  the  art  of  flirting; 
knowing  from  long  practice  that,  when  she  once  has 
yielded  her  heart,  she  forgives  even  the  infidelities  of 
a  favored  lover. 

There  is  a  beautiful  feeling  in  his  poems  of  nature. 
Wordsworth  has  dwelt  upon  the  contrast  between  the 
youthful  regard  for  nature,  —  the  feeling  of  a  healthy 
and  impassioned  child,  —  and  that  of  the  philosopher 
who  finds  in  her  a  sense  "of  something  far  more 
deeply  interfused."  The  latter  is  a  gift  that  makes  us 
grave.  It  led  Bryant  to  worship  and  invocation  ;  and 
now,  in  the  new  light  of  science,  we  seek  for,  rather 
than  feel,  the  soul  of  things.  The  charm  of  Lowell's 
outdoor  verse  lies  in  its  spontaneity ;  he  loves  nature 
with  a  child-like  joy,  her  boon  companion,  finding  even 
in  her  illusions  welcome  and  relief,  — just  as  one  gives 
himself  up  to  a  story  or  a  play,  and  will  not  be  a 
doubter.  Here  he  never  ages,  and  he  beguiles  you 
and  me  to  share  his  joy.  It  does  me  good  to  see  a 
poet  who  knows  a  bird  or  flower  as  one  friend  knows 
another,  yet  loves  it  for  itself  alone.  He  sings  among 
the   woods,  as  Boone  hunted,  refusing  to  be  edified, 


A  born 
Poet  of 
nature. 


3*8 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 


His  Pas- 
toral 
tastes. 


and  with  no  wish  for  improvements.  This  one  section 
he  reserves  for  life  itself :  — 

"  Away,  my  poets,  whose  sweet  spell 
Can  make  a  garden  of  a  cell  ! 
I  need  ye  not,  for  I  to-day 
Will  make  one  long  sweet  verse  of  play." 

His  manhood  shall  not  make  him  lose  his  boyhood ; 
the  whiff  of  the  woods,  the  brook's  voice,  the  spangle 
of  spring-flowers,  —  these  never  fail  to  stir  the  old- 
time  thrill ;  our  hearts  leap  with  his,  and  for  once  for- 
get to  ask  the  reason  why. 

Outside  the  "  Pictures  from  Appledore "  there  is 
little  of  the  ocean  in  his  verse  :  the  sea-breeze  brings 
fewer  messages  to  him  than  to  Longfellow  and  Whit- 
tier.  His  sense  of  inland  nature  is  all  the  more  alert, 
—  for  him  the  sweet  security  of  meadow-paths  and 
orchard-closes.  He  has  the  pioneer  heart,  to  which  a 
homestead  farm  is  dear  and  familiar,  and  native  woods 
and  waters  are  an  intoxication.  The  American,  im- 
pressed at  first  by  the  oaks  and  reaches  of  an  Old- 
World  park,  soon  wearies  of  them,  and  takes  like  a 
partridge  to  the  bush.  What  Lowell  loves  most  in 
nature  are  the  trees  and  their  winged  habitants,  and 
the  flowers  that  grow  untended.  "The  Indian  Sum- 
mer Reverie  "  is  an  early  and  delightful  avowal  of  his 
pastoral  tastes.  His  favorite  birds  and  trees,  the 
meadows,  river,  and  marshes,  all  are  there,  put  in 
with  strokes  no  modern  descriptive  poet  has  excelled. 
Browning's  capture  of  the  thrush's  song  is  rivalled  by 
such  a  touch  as  this  :  — 

"  Meanwhile  that  devil-may-care,  the  bobolink, 
Remembering  duty,  in  mid-quaver  stops 

Just  ere  he  sweeps  o'er  rapture's  tremulous  brink, 
And  'twixt  the  winrows  most  demurely  drops." 

The   poems   "To  a  Pine-Tree"  and    "The   Birch- 


*  VISION  OF  SIR  LA  UNFAU 


319 


Tree,"  with  their  suggestive  measures,  are  companion- 
pieces  that  will  last.  The  poet  shares  the  stormy  reign 
of  the  monarch  of  Katahdin ;  yet  loves  the  whisper  of 
the  birch  in  the  vale  :  — 

"  Thou  art  the  go-between  of  rustic  lovers ; 
Thy  white  bark  has  their  secrets  in  its  keeping ; 
Reuben  writes  here  the  happy  name  of  Patience, 
And  thy  lithe  boughs  hang  murmuring  and  weeping 
Above  her,  as  she  steals  the  mystery  from  thy  keeping." 

Of  Lowell's  earlier  pieces,  the  one  which  shows  the 
finest  sense  of  the  poetry  of  Nature  is  that  addressed 
"To  the  Dandelion."  The  opening  phrase  ranks  with 
the  selectest  of  Wordsworth  and  Keats,  to  whom  imag- 
inative diction  came  intuitively,  — 

"  Dear  common  flower,  that  grow'st  beside  the  way, 
Fringing  the  dusty  road  with  harmless  gold," 

and  both  thought  and  language  are  felicitous  through- 
out :  — 

"  Thou  art  my  tropics  and  mine  Italy ; 
To  look  at  thee  unlocks  a  warmer  clime ; 

The  eyes  thou  givest  me 
Are  in  the  heart,  and  heed  not  space  or  time : 
Not  in  mid  June  the  golden-cuirassed  bee 
Feels  a  more  summer-like  warm  ravishment 
In  the  white  lily's  breezy  tent, 
His  fragrant  Sybaris,  than  I,  when  first 
From  the  dark  green  thy  yellow  circles  burst." 

This  poem  contains  many  of  its  author's  peculiar  beau- 
ties and  none  of  his  faults ;  it  was  the  outcome  of  the 
mood  that  can  summon  a  rare  spirit  of  art  to  express 
the  gladdest  thought  and  most  elusive  feeling. 

I  think,  also,  that  The  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal  owed 
its  success  quite  as  much  to  a  presentation  of  nature 
as  to  its  misty  legend.  It  really  is  a  landscape-poem, 
of  which  the  lovely  passage,  "  And  what  is  so  rare  as 
a  day  in  June  ? "  and  the  wintry  prelude  to  Part  Sec- 


Poem  "To 
the  Dande- 
lion." 


"The 
Vision  of 
Sir  Laun- 
fal," 1848. 


320 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 


Estimate 
of  his 
work  thus 
far. 


A  new 
field. 


ond,  are   the   specific  features.      Like   the  Legend  of 
Brittany,  it  was  a  return  to  poetry  as  poetry,  and  a  sign 
that  the  author  was  groping  for  a  theme  equal  to  his 
reserved  strength.      The   Vinland   fragment   hints    at 
a  wider  range  of  experiment.     Thus  far,  in  fact,  no 
positively  new  notes.     Lowell  had  shown  his  art  and 
insight,  a  brave  purpose,  absolute  sympathy  with  na- 
ture.    The   ferment   of   his   youth   had  worked   itself 
clear.     "  Occasional  "  pieces,  the  stanzas  to  Kossuth, 
the  poem  on   the    English  graves   at   Concord,    came 
from  definite  convictions  and  a  strong  hand.     He  was 
a  man,  well  girded,  who  had   not  found   his   best  oc- 
casion •  who  needed  the  pressure  of  imminent  events 
to  bring  out  his  resources  and  make  his  work  endur- 
ing.    The  question,  "How  can  I  make  a  real  addition, 
to  literature  ?  "    often  must  have  come  to  one  so  pen- 
etrative.    Possibly  he  was  hampered,  also,  by  his  own 
culture.     The   Dervish's  ointment  may  be   too   freely 
applied  to  the  eyes ;  too  close  a  knowledge  of  the  ver- 
ities  may  check  ideal  effort, -—too  just  a  balance  of 
faculties  produces  indecision.     Practical  success  in  art 
must  come  from  every-day  ambition  and   experiment. 
But  creative  results  are  apt  to  follow  upon  the  gift 
to  look  at  things  from  without.      If   Lowell  had  not 
utilized  his  surroundings,  he  was  none  the  less  aware 
of    them.     The    solution    of  his   problem    came  when 
least  expected,  and  as  a  confirmation  of  his  theory  of 
the  Unsought.     The  clew  was   not  in  ancestral  or  Ar- 
thurian legends,  but  in  his  own  time  and  at  his  door- 
stone.     It  was  woven   of  the  homeliest,  the  most  un- 
gainly, material.      It    led  to  something   so   fresh   and 
unique  that  its  value,  like  that  of  other  positively  new 
work,  at  first  hardly  could  have  been  manifest,  even  to 
the  poet  himself. 


<  THE  BIGLOW  PAPERS: 


321 


III. 


The  Biglow  Papers  ended  all  question  of  Lowell's 
originality.  They  are  a  master-work,  in  which  his  ripe 
genius  fastened  the  spirit  of  its  region  and  period. 
Their  strength  lies  in  qualities  which,  as  here  combined, 
were  no  man's  save  his  own.  They  declare  the  faith  of 
a  sincere  and  intelligent  party  with  respect  to  war,  —  a 
sentiment  called  out  by  the  invasion  of  Mexico,  unjust 
in  itself,  but  now  seen  to  be  a  historical  factor  in  the 
world's  progress.  This  was  a  minority  faith,  held  in 
vulgar  contempt,  and  there  was  boldness  in  declaring 
it.  Again,  the  "Biglow  Papers"  were  the  first,  and 
are  the  best,  metrical  presentation  of  Yankee  character 
in  its  thought,  dialect,  manners,  and  singular  mixture 
of  coarseness  and  shrewdness  with  the  fundamental 
sense  of  beauty  and  right.  Never  sprang  the  flower 
of  art  from  a  more  unpromising  soil ;  yet  these,  are 
eclogues  as  true  as  those  of  Theocritus  or  Burns. 
Finally,  they  are  not  merely  objective  studies,  but 
charged  with  the  poet's  own  passion,  and  bearing  the 
marks  of  a  scholar's  hand. 

The  work  plainly  shows  its  manner  of  growth.  The 
first  lyric  struck  the  vein,  the  poet's  mind  took  fire  by 
its  own  friction,  and  one  effort  inspired  another.  The 
"  Papers  "  made  an  immediate  "  hit  "  ;  the  public  in- 
stinctively passed  a  judgment  upon  them,  in  which  crit- 
ics were  able  to  concur  after  the  poet  had  made  an 
opus  of  the  collected  series.  Here  was  now  seen  that 
maturity  of  genius,  of  which  Humor  is  a  flower  revealing 
the  sound  kind  man  within  the  poet.  Such  a  work  is, 
also,  an  illustration  and  defence  of  the  tenure  of  Wit 
in  the  field  of  art.  Verse  made  only  as  satire  belongs 
to  a  lower  order.      Of   such  there  are  various   didac- 


"Tke 
Biglow 
Papers," 
1846-48. 


Wit  and 
Humor. 
Their  ten- 
ure in  art. 
See  pp.  259, 
277,  and 
cp.  "  Vic- 
torian 
Poets  "  .' 
PP-  73,  77, 
35*. 


322 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 


A  broadly 

original 

•work. 


Realism. 


tic  specimens.  But  Wit  has  an  imaginative  side,  and 
Humor  springs  like  Iris  —  all  smiles  and  tears.  The 
wit  of  poets  often  has  been  the  faculty  that  ripened 
last,  the  overflow  of  their  strength  and  experience.  In 
the  "  Biglow  Papers,"  wit  and  humor  are  united  as  in 
a  composition  of  high  grade.  The  jesting  is  far  re- 
moved from  that  clownish  gabble  which,  if  it  still  in- 
creases, will  shortly  add  another  to  the  list  of  offences 
that  make  killing  no  murder. 

Lowell  was  under  thirty  at  this  time,  and  fairly  may 
be  reckoned  among  poets  who  have  done  great  work 
in  youth.  His  leap  from  provincialism  is  seen  in  the 
accessory  divisions  of  his  completed  satire.  The  "  No- 
tices of  an  Independent  Press  "  are  a  polygonal  mirror 
in  which  journalism  saw  all  its  sins  reflected,  and 
wherewith  he  scanned  not  others'  follies  only,  but  his 
own,  mocking  our  spread-eagleism,  anglophobia,  and 
the  weaker  phases  of  movements  in  which  he  himself 
had  joined.  He  burlesqued  in  mock  Latin  the  vener- 
able pomp  of  college-catalogues  and  down-East  gene- 
alogies. Then  followed  a  clever  analysis  of  the  Yankee 
dialect,  extended  and  made  authoritative  in  a  prefix  to 
his  second  series.  In  the  very  first  contribution  of  Mr. 
Biglow,  the  native  Yankee  is  immortally  portrayed. 
The  ludicrous  realism  of  the  transcript  is  without 
parallel :  — 

"Jest  go  home  an'  ask  our  Nancy 

Wether  I  'd  be  sech  a  goose 
Ez  to  jine  ye,  —  guess  you  'd  fancy 

The  etarnal  bung  wuz  loose  ! 
She  wants  me  fer  home  consumption, 

Let  alone  the  hay 's  to  mow,  — 
Ef  you  're  arter  folks  o'  gumption, 

You  've  a  darned  long  row  to  hoe." 

How  the  poet  must  have  enjoyed  that  stanza !  What 
rollicking  delight !     But  he  quickly  recalls  the  inborn 


'  THE   COURTIN';   ETC. 


323 


pride  and  patriotism,  the  sacred  wrath,  of  the  true 
New  England,  and  cries  out  from  a  wounded  spirit :  — 

"Massachusetts,  God  forgive  her, 
She  's  a-kneelin'  with  the  rest, 
She  thet  ough'  to  ha'  clung  ferever 
In  her  grand  old  eagle-nest ! " 

His  rejection  of  the  popular  ideal  of  Webster,  his 
branding  ridicule  of  Robinson,  Gushing,  and  their  like, 
and  his  scorn  of  trimmers,  vitalized  the  **  Biglow  Pa- 
pers "  and  make  their  hits  proverbial.  /  The  first  se- 
ries was  a  protest  not  only  against  the  slave-holders' 
invasion  of  Mexico,  but  against  war  itself.  Fifteen 
years  later  a  greater  war  arose,  a  mortal  struggle  to 
repress  the  wrong  that  caused  the  first.  To  such  a 
conflict  even  Lowell  could  not  say  nay;  his  kinsmen 
freely  gave  their  blood,  and  bereavement  after  bereave- 
ment came  fast  upon  him.  In  the  second  series  of 
the  "  Biglow  Papers "  the  humor  is  more  grim,  the 
general  feeling  more  intense.  Still  they  are  not  Tyr- 
taean  strains,  but  chiefly  called  out  by  political  epi- 
sodes, —  like  the  Mason  and  Slidell  affair,  —  and 
constantly  the  poet  seeks  a  relief  from  the  tension  of 
the  hour.  One  feels  this  in  reading  the  dialogue 
between  the  Bridge  and  the  Monument  at  Concord 
suggested  by  Burns's  "Twa  Briggs,"  the  return  to 
"  Sunthin'  in  the  Pastoral  Line,"  or,  most  of  all,  "  The 
Courtin'."  This  bucolic  idyl  is  without  a  counterpart ; 
no  richer  juice  can  be  pressed  from  the  wild-grape  of 
the  Yankee  soil.  It  is  a  most  artistic  idealization  of 
the  theme  and  method  essayed  years  before  by  a  New 
Hampshire  poet  and  wit,  Fessenden,  in  "  The  Country 
Lovers."  Of  the  Biglow  epistles,  the  tenth  has  the 
most  pathetic  undertone.  It  was  composed,  seemingly 
at  a  heat,  in  answer  to  a  request  for  — 


"TJu 

Biglow 

Pa/>ersJ 

Second 

Series-, 

1862-66. 


"Tkt 

Courtin^.* 


324 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 


"  Out  of 
the  abun- 
dance of 
the  heart. " 


"  sunthin'  light  an'  cute, 
Rattlin'  an'  shrewd  an'  kin'  o'  jingleish." 

Mr.  Biglow  justifies  the  tone  of  his  new  series  by 
avowing  the  immeasurable  anguish  and  perplexity  ot 
the  time  :  — 

"  Where  's  Peace  ?    I  start,  some  clear-blown  night, 
When  gaunt  stone  walls  grow  numb  an'  number, 
An',  creakin'  'cross  the  snow-crus'  white, 
Walk  the  col'  starlight  into  summer." 

His  heart  is  full  with  its  own  sorrows  ;  he  half-despises 
himself  "for  rhymin',"  when  his  young  kinsmen  have 
fallen  in  the  fray:  — 

"  Why,  hain't  I  held  'em  on  my  knee  ? 
Did  n't  I  love  to  see  'em  growin', 
Three  likely  lads  ez  wal  could  be, 

Hahnsome  an'  brave  an'  not  tu  knowin' ? 

'T  ain't  right  to  hev  the  young  go  fust, 

All  throbbin'  full  o'  gifts  an'  graces, 
Leavin'  life's  paupers  dry  ez  dust 

To  try  an'  make  b'lieve  fill  their  places  ! " 

He  longs  for  Peace,  but  invokes  her  to  come,  — 

"not  like  a  mourner,  bowed 

For  honor  lost  and  dear  ones  wasted, 
But  proud,  to  meet  a  people  proud, 

With  eyes  thet  tell  o'  triumph  tasted ! 
Come,  with  han'  grippin'  on  the  hilt, 

An'  step  that  proves  ye  Victory's  daughter  ! 
Longin'  fer  you,  our  sperits  wilt 

Like  shipwrecked  men's  on  raf's  for  water." 

These  final  lyrics,  less  varied  and  sparkling  than  their 
predecessors,  are,'  in  not  infrequent  passages,  more 
poetical.  The  author's  statement  of  the  causes  and 
method  of  his  work  is  more  suggestive  than  Poe's 
whimsical  analysis  of  "  The  Raven,"  and  not  open  to 
the  suspicion  of  being  written  for  effect. 


{A    FABLE  FOR   CRITICS : 


325 


The  "  Biglow  Papers,"  as  we  now  have  them,  form 
a  strongly  proportioned  work,  and  are  a  positive  ad- 
dition to  the  serio-comic  literature  of  the  world.  They 
are  almost  apart  from  criticism  ;  there  is  no  prototype 
by  which  to  test  them.  Lowell  has  been  compared  to 
Butler,  but  "  Hudibras,"  whether  as  poetry  or  histor- 
ical satire,  is  vastly  below  the  master-work  of  the  New 
England  idyllist.  The  titles  of  a  few  great  books, 
each  of  which  has  no  fellow,  come  to  mind  as  we  think 
of  its  possible  rank  and  duration,  and  I  observe  that 
Mr.  Sanborn  does  not  fear  to  mention  the  highest. 
It  is  a  point  in  favor  of  transatlantic  judgment  that 
the  "  Biglow  Papers  "  first  gave  Lowell  the  standing, 
with  those  who  make  opinion  in  England,  which  his 
choicest  poems  of  art  and  nature  had  failed  to  pro- 
cure for  him.  From  that  time  their  interest  in  him- 
self and  his  work  has  been  apparent.  Their  univer- 
sity degrees,  their  estimates  of  his  genius  and  his 
character,  declare  him  to  be  one  whom  the  mother- 
land delights  to  honor,  and  have  made  more  distinct 
the  position  which,  as  I  have  said,  he  holds  among 
our  men  of  letters. 

His  literary  satire,  A  Fable  for  Critics,  was  a  good- 
natured  tilt  at  the  bards  of  Griswold's  Parnassus,  — 
a  piece  of  uneven  merit,  but  far  from  being  open  to 
the  charge  —  that  of  malevolence  —  which  Poe  brought 
against  it.  The  estimate  of  Poe  is  not  unfair,  and 
other  sketches  —  such  as  those  of  Bryant,  Hawthorne, 
Whittier,  and  Dwight  — are  deftly  made.  Nor  could 
one  put  a  surer  finger  upon  Lowell's  short-comings 
than  his  own  in  the  lines  upon  himself.  The  allegory 
of  the  fable  is  trite.  Its  sections  are  loosely  united, 
the  language  and  rhythm  are  at  nap-hazard,  and,  on 
the  whole,  it  is  a  rather  careless  production,  however 
true  to  the  time  and  tribe  it  celebrates. 


A  unique 
addition  to 
literature. 


A  Fable 
for  Crit- 
ics,'" 1848. 


326 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 


LowelVs 
prose  writ" 
ings. 


"  Conver- 
sations on 
Some  of 
the  Old 
Poets" 


Ed.  the 

"■Atlantic 
Monthly" 
1857-62. 


Ed.,  with 
C.  E.  Nor- 
ton, of  the 
u  No.  A  m. 
Review^ 
1863-72. 


IV. 

A  poet  of  intellectual  scope  will  not  content  him- 
self with  verse,  as  the  sole  outlet  of  his  thought  and 
feeling.  Lowell's  essays  display  his  genius  in  free 
activity,  and  have  added  greatly,  and  justly,  to  his 
authority  and  standing.  One  could  not  select  better 
illustrations  of  the  union  of  the  critical  and  artistic 
faculties,  or  of  the  distinctions  and  analogies  between 
the  verse  and  prose  of  a  poet. 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  Lowell's  political  and  moral 
convictions  appear  chiefly  in  his  verse.  His  prose 
appertains  to  literature,  and,  with  the  exception  of 
some  graceful  sketch-work,  bits  of  travel  ;and  reminis- 
cence, has  been  restricted  to  criticism.  His  earliest 
prose  volume  was  of  this  kind,  in  the  form  of  Conver- 
sations on  the  old  poets  and  dramatists.  These  are 
the  ardent  generalizations  of  a  young  poet,  apprecia- 
tive rather  than  searching.  They  are  superseded  by 
his  maturer  survey  of  their  field,  but  had  a  stimulat- 
ing influence  in  their  time.  Many  who  were  students 
then  remember  the  glow  which  they  felt  when  Lowell's 
early  lectures  and  essays  directed  them  to  a  sense  of 
what  is  best  in  English  song.  Young  enthusiasts,  at 
Cambridge,  found  him  an  ideal  teacher  and  professor 
of  belles-lettres.  As  years  went  on,  his  critical  pen 
was  rarely  idle.  A  good  fate  determined  that  he 
should  be  subjected  to  the  demands  of  journalistic 
routine  —  that  he  should  carry  the  "  Atlantic  Monthly  " 
to  a  sure  foot-hold,  advancing  the  standard  of  our  mag- 
azine literature  ;  and  that  he  should  afterward  hold 
for  nine  years  an  editorship  of  the  "  North  American 
Review."  Such  responsibilities  overcome  a  writer's 
vis  inertia.     He  naturally  becomes  his  own  best  con- 


SKETCHES  AND   CRITICAL   ESSAYS. 


327 


tributor,  and  it  was,  in  a  measure,  to  the  spur  of  his 
engagements  that  we  owe  a  notable  series  of  literary 
essays,  many  of  which  first  appeared  in  the  review  I 
have  named.  Publishers  have  not  found  his  study  a 
reservoir  into  which  they  might  insert  their  taps  at 
pleasure.  But  one  must  spend  time  in  gathering 
knowledge  to  give  it  out  richly,  and  few  comprehend 
what  goes  to  a  page  of  Lowell's  manuscript.  The  page 
itself,  were  it  a  letter  or  press-report,  could  be  written 
in  a  quarter-hour ;  but  suppose  it  represents,  as  in  one 
of  his  greater  essays,  the  result  of  prolonged  studies 
—  the  reading,  indexing,  formulating  works  in  various 
languages,  upon  his  shelves  or  in  the  Harvard  library  ? 
Of  all  this  he  gives  the  ultimate  quintessence,  a  dis- 
tillation fragrant  with  his  own  genius.  Who  can  es- 
timate the  toil  of  such  work?  What  can  adequately 
pay  for  it?  There  are  two  guerdons  that  raise  the 
spirit  to  scorn  delights  and  live  laborious  days  :  Mil- 
ton sings  of  one  —  but  the  surer  is  the  "  exceeding 
great  reward  "  of  the  work  itself. 

Lowell's  important  reviews  and  studies,  selected  with 
excellent  discretion,  are  contained  in  My  Study  Win- 
dows, and  in  the  first  and  second  series  of  Among  My 
Books.  These,  with  the  Fireside  Travels,  make  up  the 
collection,  in  four  volumes,  of  his  prose  works.  His 
style  is  marked  by  individuality.  Underwood  suggests 
that  "  the  distinctive  prose  of  a  poet  is  necessarily  quite 
removed  from  general  apprehension."  The  word  "dis- 
tinctive "  seems  the  one  qualification  that  justifies  the 
remark.  And  how  is  a  poet's  prose  distinctive  ?  Not 
in  rhythmic  undulations,  if  he  be  a  true  poet  and  artist. 
Such  a  writer  does  not  lend  the  semblance  of  verse 
to  his  prose.  To  do  this,  he  must  produce  something 
inferior  to  either.  Few  metrical  cadences  in  the  prose 
of   Milton,  Goldsmith,   Coleridge,   Byron,   Landor,   or 


"  Fireside 
Travels," 
1864. 

"A  tnong 
My  Books  » 
1870. 

"My  Study 
Windows," 
1871. 

"j4  mong- 
MyBooks,n 
Second  Se- 
ries, 1876. 

The  prose 
of  poets. 

cp. 

"  Victo- 
rian Po- 
ets: "A  37- 


328 


JAMES  RUSSELL   LOWELL. 


Individu- 
ality of 
LoweWs 
prose. 


The  stric- 
tures upon 
it. 


Bryant.  Its  strength  and  beauty  are  of  another  kind. 
Many  of  Dickens's  passages,  we  know,  can  be  assorted 
into  lengths  of  semi-metrical  verse  ;  but  Dickens,  when 
he  tried  to  make  poems,  had  no  great  success.  Thack- 
eray, whose  prose  is  prose,  was,  within  his  range,  a 
charming  poet.  Longfellow's  "Hyperion"  is  excep- 
tional—  written  as  a  "prose-poem"  by  a  young  artist 
fresh  from  the  sentiment  of  German  mystics  and  ro- 
mances. As  for  Carlyle,  he  was  a  poet,  as  Lowell 
says,  "without  the  gift  of  song."  He  invented  a 
special  kind  of  prose  as  his  form  of  poetic  expression. 
I  infer  that  a  poet's  prose  is  not  removed  from  general 
apprehension  by  its  technique ;  all  things  considered,  I 
expect  to  find  it  as  clear  and  unadulterate  as  that  of 
any  layman  —  not  more  illogical,  not  more  dependent 
on  the  reader's  intuition  to  fill  out  its  lapses.  A  poet's 
instinct  is  constructive,  little  given  to  omissions  in 
prose  syntax.  If  his  prose  is  hard  to  understand,  it 
may  be  that  he  is  a  learned  thinker,  whose  thoughts 
and  references  do  not  come  at  once  within  popular 
apprehension. 

It  is  because  a  poet  is  more  original,  not  more  er- 
ratic, than  many  laymen,  that  his  prose  often  is  so 
individual.  Lowell's  is  clear  enough  to  those  familiar 
with  the  choicest  literature.  In  critical  exploits  that 
bring  out  his  resources,  he  is  not  a  writer  for  dullards, 
and  to  read  him  enjoyably  is  a  point  in  evidence  of 
a  liberal  education.  His  manner,  in  fact,  is  Protean, 
adjusted  to  his  topic,  and  has  a  flexibility  that  well 
expresses  his  racy  wit  and  freshness  :  combined  with 
this,  peculiarities  that  irritate  the  most  catholic  minds. 
Outspoken  reviewers  have  subjected  it  to  minute  anal- 
ysis, and  declared  their  sense  of  its  shortcomings. 
Their  statement  that  it  is  not  creative,  but  critical,  is 
true  in   the  ordinary  meaning;  yet  I  doubt  if  "crea- 


HIS  PROSE  STYLE. 


329 


tive "  criticism  and  that  which  is  truly  critical  differ 
like  the  experimental  and  analytic  chemistries.  Cer- 
tainly Lowell  is  a  most  suggestive  essayist.  He  sets 
us  a-thinking,  and,  after  a  stretch  of  comment,  halts 
in  by-paths,  or  enlivens  us  with  his  sudden  wit.  He 
has  the  intellect,  held  to  be  a  mark  of  greatness,  that 
"  puts  in  motion  the  intellect  of  others."  But  he  is 
charged  with  querulousness,  inconsistency  of  judgment, 
contempt  for  unity,  and  with  the  habit  of  becoming 
entangled  in  expression.  Attention  is  directed  to  the 
conceits,  the  whimsical  diction  and  recondite  instances, 
to  be  found  in  these  essays.  Verse,  not  prose,  is  de- 
clared by  a  few  to  be  his  proper  vehicle.  The  indict- 
ment has  some  foundation,  but  to  what  extent  does 
it  affect  his  general  merits  ?  Things  bad  in  themselves 
are  often  part  of  an  author's  essential  quality.  It 
seems  to  me  that  there  is  a  close  analogy  between  the 
styles  of  Lowell's  verse  and  prose,  distinct  as  the  two 
forms  are,  —  an  analogy  to  be  observed,  if  I  had  space 
to  point  it  out,  in  the  verse  and  prose  of  other  poets, 
and  inevitable  from  an  author's  habits  of  mind.  I 
cannot  better  state  the  matter  than  by  saying  that  the 
beauties  and  faults  of  the  one  are  those  of  the  other ; 
both  are  open  to  the  criticisms  already  made,  and  to 
which  I  may  refer  again  j  but  each  is  sustained  by  a 
spirit  which  makes  the  reader  forgive  and  forget.  Un- 
der the  drift  and  stubble  that  float  on  the  surface  is 
the  strong,  deep  current  which  bears  them  along,  or 
throws  them  to  the  side  and  keeps  a  central  channel 
clear. 

Lowell's  lighter  touches  have  the  grace  that  is  al- 
ways modern.  The  "  Fireside  Travels  "  make  his  cen- 
sors withhold  their  arrows  of  the  chase,  pleased  with 
the  landscape  and  the  guide.  However  exquisite  the 
art  of  our  latest  sketch-writers,  who  is  better  company 


How  far 
justifiable. 


Sketch- 
work. 


33Q 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 


Greater 
Essays. 


His  style. 


than  Lowell  in  Old-World  loiterings  or  more  deft  in 
wood-craft    and    garden-craft    at    home  ?     His    other 
prose  volumes  have  sturdier  characteristics.     Here  are 
the  companion-pieces  on  Lessing  and  Rousseau;  the 
series  —  a  labor  of  years  —  upon  the   great   English 
masters,   from   Chaucer  to    Keats   and    Carlyle;    the 
elaborate   study  of   Dante;  the   off-hand  portraits   of 
Josiah  Quincy,   Lincoln,   Thoreau ;   no   common    sub- 
jects these,  —  who  grapples  them  must  do  his  best,  or 
suffer  a  fall.     Other  essays,    too,    that    are   not  soon 
forgotten  :  "  Witchcraft  in  New  England,"  the  famous 
treatise  "  On  a  Certain  Condescension  in  Foreigners," 
and    two   papers  —  "My  Garden  Acquaintance,"  and 
"A  Good  Word  for  Winter,"  —  outdoor  studies  that 
would  have  delighted  the  man  of  Selborne.     The  style 
of  the  critical   prose  certainly  is   not   modelled   upon 
Addison   and  his   school ;  it  is   scarcely  what  Lowell 
himself  describes  as  "  that  exquisite  something  called 
Style,  which  makes  itself  felt  by  the  skill  with  which 
it  effaces  itself,  and  masters   us  at  last  with  a  sense 
of  indefinable  completeness."     To  some  it  may  seem 
a  stumbling-block  ;  but  to  most,  I  fancy,  it  is  the  self- 
expression  of  a  versatile,  learned,  original  man.    When 
over-freighted  with  words  from   other  languages,    new 
and  old,  the  polyglotism  implies  so  close  a  familiarity 
with  -many  literatures    that   he  cannot  avoid  drawing 
on  them  for  his  purpose.     A   pedant  quotes   for   the 
sake  of  a  display  of  learning ;  Lowell,  because  he  has 
mastered  everything  connected  with    his  theme.     His 
style,    as    I    have    hinted,    sometimes    is    quaintly    in- 
fluenced  by  his   topic   and  its  associations.     "  Witch- 
craft" revives    here    and   there   the  manner   of   more 
than   one  seventeenth-century  homilist.     The   English 
proper  of  this  curious  and  learned  essay,  with  all  its 
auroral  qualities,  is  less  simple  and  strong  than  that 


THE  SCHOLAR. 


33* 


of  the  critic's  noble  discourse  of  Dryden,  whose  very 
Latinism  seems  to  befit  the  spirit  of  its  hero.  It 
should  be  noted  that  Lowell's  polysyllables  —  and 
few  writers  have  more  —  do  not  weigh  down  the  page ; 
they  are  accelerative,  galloping,  even  charging,  in  leap 
on  leap,  from  section  to  section.  His  word-coining  is 
less  venial,  for  he  does  not  lack  taste,  and  at  times 
exercises  it  rigidly.  But  his  humor,  learning,  and  ca- 
price audaciously  put  it  by,  with  a  "Go  thy  way  till 
I  need  thee  ! "  His  comments  on  Spenser's  innova- 
tions should  be  self-applied,  and  especially  the  words 
culled  from  Bellay,  who  bids  his  poet  "  Fear  not  to 
innovate  somewhat  .  .  .  with  modesty,  however,  with 
analogy,  and  judgment  of  ear."  His  linguistic  ar- 
senal serves  him  well :  nor  does  he  fail  of  fine  exor- 
diums and  perorations,  and  sentences  whose  "beauty 
and  majesty,"  as  he  says  of  Spenser's,  he  refuses  to 
endanger  by  "  experiments  of  this  kind."  But  we 
should  miss  something  if  we  held  him  to  his  own  for- 
mula of  the  best  writing,  that  in  which  the  "  compo- 
nent parts "  of  English  "  are  most  exquisitely  propor- 
tioned one  to  the  other." 

Authors  who  do  lay-work  for  a  living,  and  pursue 
their  art  in  hours  which  are  the  breathing-time  of 
other  men,  are  permitted  few  of  the  common  pleas- 
ures for  which  they  needs  must  crave.  Their  manu- 
scripts are  written  in  their  blood,  and  the  ink  grows 
pale  apace.  Even  the  delight  of  reading,  that  at 
once  stimulates  and  draws  upon  the  brain,  is  forbid- 
den to  one  who  is  harnessed  in  the  van  of  a  profes- 
sional career.  But  Lowell,  I  suspect,  has  been  shy  of 
any  harness  from  which  he  could  not  bolt  at  will. 
His  book-feeding  has  been  unstinted,  omnivorous :  he 
was  born  among  books,  reared  upon  them,  and  has 
taken  from  them  that  which  enriches  him  yet  leaves 


Caprice. 


Thorough 
equip- 
ment. 


332 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 


Lowell 
and  Poe. 


Theory  of 
transla- 
tion.    See 
f.  209. 


Point  and 
wisdom. 


them  none  the  poorer.     Of    all  writing-men,  he  who 
can  read  without   stint    is    to    be    envied^Take   the 
essay  on  Chaucer  j  it   is  the  result   of  perfect   equip- 
ment for  a  literary  task.     It  is  a  spring-time  brew  of 
philological  comment   and  poetic   induction:    it  reeks 
with  fact,  flavored  by  originality.     Here  is  a  rare  elu- 
cidation of  both  the  letter  and  the  spirit  of  Chaucer's 
song ;  no  mere  scholar  could  so  illumine  the  process, 
and   no  poet  who  was  not   a   scholar  would  venture 
upon  ij/Lowell  is  the  contratype  of  Poe,  who  made  a 
flourish  of  scholarship,  and  was  sure  of  little  for  which 
he  did  not  cram.     Poe's  humor,  moreover,  was  a  heavy 
lance,    awkwardly  and    maliciously  couched;    Lowell 
holds  his  weapon  with  grace  and  courtesy,  and  has  a 
sword  of  wit  in  reserve,  should  affairs  grow  serious. 
His  faculty  of  scholarly  assimilation  and  reproduction 
resembles    Montaigne's.     What   he  thoroughly  enjoys 
is  work  like  his  review  of  the  "  Library  of  Old   Au- 
thors."    This  paper   opens  with   a   talk   upon   books, 
pleasant  as  Lamb's  gossip  and  with  latter-day  thought 
and  criticism  beneath  the  winning  style  ;  then  follow 
swift  but  searching  etymological  tests  of  early  authors 
and  modern  editors,  from  which  the  latter  come  out 
with  some  loss  of  lustre.     Lowell's  idea  of  translation 
is  free  reproduction  by  a  man  of  genius.     He  values 
Chapman,  and  declares   that    Keats,  of   all  men,  was 
the  one  to  have   translated  Homer.     One  would  like 
to  see  a  translation  from  his  own  hand,  say  of  Aris- 
tophanes :  should  the  text  halt,  the  commentary  alone 
would    repay  us,    and    the   freest  versions    by   Lowell 
might  be  something  "  more  original  than  his  originals." 
His  wit  inclines  him   to  condense  professional   truths 
in  expressions  that  stick  in   the  memory.     The  mono- 
graph  on    Spenser  sparkles    with  clever,  pointed  say- 
ings :    "  Chaucer  had  been  in  his  grave  one  hundred 


POINTED  SAYINGS. 


333 


and  fifty  years  ere  England  had  secreted  choice  ma- 
terial enough  for  the  making  of  another  great  poet." 
Of  ancient  poetasters,   it  cannot  be   said    "that  their 
works  have  perished  because  they  were  written  in  an 
obsolete   dialect ;  for  it   is  the  poem    that  keeps   the 
language  alive,   and   not  the  language   that  buoys  up 
the   poem."    .    .    .    "The   complaints   one    sometimes 
hears   of  the  neglect  of  our  older   literature  are  the 
regrets  of   archaeologists    rather   than  of  critics.     One 
does  not  need  to  advertise  the   squirrels  "  (this   sen- 
tence is  like  Landor)  "  where  the   nut-trees  are,   nor 
could  any  amount  of  lecturing  persuade  them  to  spend 
their  teeth  on   a    hollow  nut."  ..."  Any  verse  that 
makes  you  and  me   foreigners  is   not   only  not  great 
poetry,  but  no  poetry  at  all."     Speaking  of  Dunbar's 
works,  "Whoso   is   national   enough    to    like   thistles 
may  browse   there  to   his   heart's   content.     I  am  in- 
clined  for   other   pasture,    having   long   ago   satisfied 
myself  by  a  good  deal  of  dogged  reading  that  every 
generation  is  sure  of  its  own  share  of  bores  without 
borrowing  from  the  past."     And  in  "Witchcraft"  he 
says  that  Sidney  "  seems  to  have  divined  the  fact  that 
there  is  but  one  kind  of  English  that  is  always  appro- 
priate  and   never    obsolete,    namely,   the    very  best." 
With   all    this    point   and   wisdom,    he    often   cannot 
refrain    from    unleashing    conceits    that    fly    without 
"  stamping  "  their  imagery.     In  a  single  page  he  com- 
pares Chaucer's  style  to  a  river  and  a  precious  vin- 
tage, and  contrasts  it  with  the  froth  of  champagne  and 
the  folly  of  Milo.     In  relation  to   Shakespeare's  birth, 
we  have  astrology,  vinous  processes,  and  alembic  pro- 
jection, following  upon  one  another  as  illustrations  of 
the  coming  nativity.     Afterward,  while  censuring  lan- 
guage   that   is    "literary,   so   that   there  is  a  gap  be- 
tween the  speech  of  books  and  that  of  life,"  Lowell 


A bundant 
conceits. 


334 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 


Imagery* 


A  sure  and 
indepen- 
dent critic. 


tells  us  that  "  a  mind  in  itself  essentially  original  be- 
comes in  the  use  of  such  a  medium  of  utterance  un- 
consciously reminiscential  and  reflective,  lunar  and  not 
solar,  in  expression  and  even  in  thought !  "  Passages 
of  this  sort  not  unnaturally  move  other  critics,  in 
their  turn,  to  fling  a  de  te  fabula  at  the  writer.  An 
author,  in  truth,  "  should  consider  how  largely  the  art 
of  writing  consists  in  knowing  what  to  leave  in  the 
inkstand."  But  Mr.  Lowell  is  not  unconscious  of 
these  things:  he  toys  with  licenses,  as  if  to  prove 
that,  next  to  Chapman,  "he  has  the  longest  wind 
.  .  .  without  being  long-winded,"  of  all  authors.  Nor 
have  we  any  writer  whose  imagery  is  oftener  strong 
and  exquisite  :  as  in  the  description  of  a  snowy  winter 
landscape,  or  at  the  close  of  his  "  Milton,"  or  where, 
in  "  Spenser,"  he  glorifies  the  handiwork  of  "  the  witch, 
Imagination." 

Lowell's  scrutiny  is  sure,  and  his  tests  are  apt  and 
instant.  He  is  a  detective  to  be  dreaded  by  preten- 
ders. He  wastes  no  reverence  upon  traditional  errors, 
but  no  man  is  more  impatient  of  sham-reform,  less 
afraid  of  odia,  whether  theological,  scientific,  or  aes- 
thetic. As  a  comparative  critic,  there  are  few  so  well 
served  by  memory  and  reading.  In  the  essay  on 
Milton  he  treats  with  novel  discrimination  the  respec- 
tive modes  of  Shakespeare,  Milton,  and  Tasso.  Writ- 
ing of  Wordsworth,  Swinburne,  and  others,  he  uses 
the  comparative  method  to  good  purpose.  No  one  is 
a  better  judge  of  what  is  original.  Most  things  have 
been  said  more  than  once,  and  he  knows  by  whom. 
His  standard  is  the  manner  of  saying.  "  In  the  par- 
liament of  the  present,"  he  declares,  "  every  man  rep- 
resents a  constituency  of  the  past";  and  again, 
"  Writers  who  have  no  past  are  pretty  sure  of  having 
no  future  " ;   and   "  It  is   the  man  behind  the  words 


AS  A    CRITIC. 


that  gives  them  value."  He  names  Chaucer,  Shake- 
speare, Dryden,  in  evidence  of  the  truth  that  "It  is 
not  the  finding  of  a  thing,  but  the  making  something 
of  it  after  it  is  found,  that  is  of  consequence."  In  his 
paper  on  Wordsworth,  he  draws  a  distinction  between 
originality  and  eccentricity  which,  I  fear,  will  not  soon 
become  obsolete  for  want  of  cases  in  illustration. 
Striking  points  are  frequent  in  his  critical  prose.  It 
is  Lowell  who  says,  of  Shakespeare,  that  the  manner 
of  a  first-class  poet  is  incommunicable,  and  therefore 
he  never  can  found  a  school.  His  essay  on  Carlyle, 
undertaken  at  a  time  when  few  ventured  to  dispute 
the  old  Norseman's  autocracy,  is,  on  the  whole,  as 
just  as  it  is  independent ;  that  on  Lincoln  could  only 
have  been  written  by  one  whose  convictions  rendered 
him  prophetic.  Lowell's  analogical  gift  is  seen  in  his 
comparison  of  Lincoln  to  Henry  IV.  —  made  before 
the  President's  assassination  had  completed  the  par- 
allel. His  declaration,  in  "  Spenser,"  of  the  qualities 
of  voice  that  "  define  a  man  as  a  poet,"  is  not  to  be 
gainsaid,  and  he  also  gives  us  a  clever  test  of  the 
worth  of  allegory,  —  it  must  be  that  which  the  reader 
"  helps  to  make  out  of  his  own  experience."  It  is 
true  that  his  verdicts  are  not  always  such  as  we  agree 
with,  nor  do  they  always  agree  among  themselves. 
Being  a  poet,  he  is  prone  to  express  his  immediate 
feeling  without  submitting  it  to  the  principles  that,  in 
fact,  govern  his  final  judgment.  This  imparts  life  to 
a  writer,  but  subjects  him  to  the  charge  of  inconsis- 
tency, especially  if  it  is  not  his  habit  to  revise  past 
work.  Lowell  scarcely  does  justice  to  Wordsworth's 
imagination,  though  keenly  alive  to  the  bard's  pueril- 
ities and  want  of  humor.  His  essay  on  Dryden,  as  a 
presentation  of  the  man  and  poet,  is  the  best  of  its 
length,  and  contains  some  of  the  writer's  finest   apo- 


Impuhe. 


336 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 


Structured 
imagina- 
tion. 


thegms;  that  on  Pope  is  inferior,  —  the  critic  being 
so  out  of  personal  liking  for  the  figure-head  of  his 
youth  as  to  treat  him  not  without  fairness  and  dis- 
crimination, but,  I  think,  inadequately.  He  possibly 
overrates  Clough,  as  a  signal  representative  of  modern 
feeling,  yet  may  be  forgiven  for  this,  as  he  knew  and 
loved  him,  and  was  joined  with  him  in  the  freema- 
sonry of  comrades  and  poets.  He  has  touched  very 
lightly,  once  and  again,  on  Emerson,  but  with  precision 
and  truth.  His  analysis  of  Thoreau  is  sharply  criti- 
cised as  being  narrow,  but  it  did  expose  the  defective 
side  of  a  unique  character,  and,  all  things  considered, 
is  the  subtlest  of  his  minor  reviews. 

Lowell  rightly  holds  the  highest  imagination  to  be, 
not  so  much  that  which  "gathers  into  the  intense 
focus  of  passionate  phrase,"  as  "the  faculty  that 
shapes  and  gives  unity  of  design  and  balanced  grav- 
itation of  parts."  His  work,  as  we  have  seen,  at 
times  displays  the  former  kind,  rather  than  the  latter. 
It  is  in  dwelling  on  special  traits,  with  praise  or  cen- 
sure, that  he  seems  discursive.  Thus,  while  his 
"Shakespeare  Once  More"  includes  a  masterly  expo- 
sition of  the  dramatist's  style,  it  is  fragmentary  — 
even  more  than  need  be  — in  the  special  touches  that 
follow.  Other  papers  fall  short  in  construction;  they 
are  not  sustained  upon  the  scales  indicated  at  com- 
mencement. This  lack  of  balance,  I  am  sure,  is  due 
quite  as  much  to  circumstances  as  to  the  critic's  tem- 
perament, and  largely  to  the  limits  of  the  periodicals 
for  which  he  has  written.  His  mind  seizes  upon  a 
great  theme,  in  mass  and  in  detail,  and  he  begins  as 
if  to  cover  it  thoroughly.  "  Lessing "  opens  with  a 
broad  view  of  the  German  intellect  and  literature; 
"  Chaucer "  with  a  survey  of  the  Troubadour  period  ; 
and  the  analogous  introductions  to  Spenser,  Dryden, 


LITERARY  WEALTH  AND  FREEDOM. 


337 


Pope,  are  of  the  utmost  value.  But  to  complete  an 
essay  upon  this  plan  a  book  must  be  written.  We 
are  none  the  less  grateful  for  Lowell's  noble  vesti- 
bules, even  though  we  find  them  too  large  for  the 
structures.  Surplusage  is  a  royal  fault.  We  see  that 
he  can  be  an  artist  at  will,  though  constantly  setting 
the  law  of  his  nature  above  all  laws.  Some  of  the 
greater  essays  are  both  various  and  complete.  That 
upon  Dante  is  a  superb  example ;  one  need  not  be  a 
Dantean  scholar  to  comprehend  the  scope  and  strength 
of  this  prolonged,  cumulative,  coherent  analysis  of  the 
Florentine's  career  —  fortified  by  citations,  and  en- 
riched with  a  knowledge  of  Italian  history,  literature, 
atmosphere,  at  the  close  of  the  thirteenth  century, 
such  as  few  living  men  possess. 

Have  I  not  indicated  that  the  unfailing  value  of 
Lowell's  prose  work  consists  in  freedom  and  variety 
that  are  the  true  reflex  of  the  man  himself?  His 
resources  make  him  prodigal,  and  he  has  the  brave 
impatience  of  a  skilled  performer  who  trusts  his  ear 
and  is  none  too  careful  of  the  written  score.  We 
seem  to  have  his  first  notes,  and  find  them  better 
than  the  revised  drafts  of  other  men.  It  is  a  fellow- 
feeling  which  leads  him  to  say  of  Dryden,  that  "one 
of  the  charms  of  his  best  writing  is  that  everything 
seems  struck  off  at  a  heat,  as  by  a  superior  man  in 
the  best  mood  of  his  talk."  This  transfer  of  his  own 
nature  is  delightful.  He  will  be  free,  and  his  cen- 
sors should  rate  his  freedom  at  its  worth,  and  not 
hold  him  too  rigidly  to  conventionalities  which  he 
understands,  yet  chooses  to  forego.  Even  the  ar- 
rangement of  his  essays  seems  to  be  a  chance  one, 
but  there  is  an  art  in  the  chance.  He  has  given  us 
a  series  of  literary  monographs  in  which  Americans 
may  take  just  pride,  for  his  genius  has  imparted  new 

22 


Copious- 
ness. 


Essential 
value  of 
his  prose 
work. 


33* 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL, 


"  Under 
the  Wil- 
lows, and 
other 
Poems," 
1868. 


light  and  freshness  to  the  greatest  themes.  To  these 
he  might  add  equally  notable  studies  of  Cervantes, 
Moliere,  and  Goethe.  No  living  man  could  venture 
with  less  presumption  to  summon  up  once  more  the 
spirits  of  those  masters.  But  already  the  wealth  of 
his  critical  product  is  surprising.  I  think  that  a  se- 
lection of  apothegms  and  maxims  could  be  made 
from  it,  which,  for  original  thoughts  and  wise  teach- 
ing of  the  author's  art,  would  be  worth  more  to  the 
literary  neophyte,  and  afford  more  satisfaction  to  vet- 
eran readers,  than  a  digest  of  the  English  prose  of 
any  other  writer  since  Landor  in  his  prime. 


V. 

Lowell's  prose  diversions,  so  wide  in  range,  could 
not  have  been  made  without  some  lapse  of  fealty  to 
the  muse  of  song.  When,  in  1868,  the  volume  Under 
the  Willows  appeared,  a  note  stated  that  the  poems 
mostly  had  been  written  at  intervals  during  many 
years.  There  is,  none  the  less,  an  air  of  afternoon 
about  them.  They  are  the  songs  of  a  man  who  in 
truth  has  gelebt  und  geliebet — to  revive  the  motto  of 
his  juvenile  book  —  and  who  has  lived  to  love  again. 
Their  thought  is  subtler,  their  subjectivity  that  of  one 
who  reads  the  hearts  of  others  in  his  own.  The 
title -piece  is  a  most  refreshing  stretch  of  pastoral 
verse.  Here  and  elsewhere  his  sympathy  with  birds 
and  trees  continues,  and  much  resembles  Landor's :  — 

"But  I  in  June  am  midway  to  believe 
A  tree  among  my  far  progenitors, 

And  I  have  many  a  life-long  leafy  friend, 
Never  estranged  nor  careful  of  my  soul. 
That  knows  I  hate  the  axe." 


LATER  POEMS. 


339 


The  close  recalls  the  feeling  of  the  "Thalysia"  of 
Theocritus,  yet  escapes  the  parallel  displayed  in  cer- 
tain idyls  of  Tennyson.  The  opening  gives  us  a 
finer  rhapsody  of  June,  though  less  apt  to  catch  the 
popular  ear,  than  the  one  in  "  Sir  Launfal."  No 
common  musician  can  touch  so  variously  a  well-worn 
theme. 

I  do  not  read  these  later  poems  without  remem- 
bering the  moods  to  which  Arthur  Clough  was  sub- 
ject, and  which  also  affect  the  verse  of  another  with 
whom  his  too  brief  life  was  associated.  "Auf  Wie- 
dersehen"  and  its  "  Palinode  "  —  delicate,  brooding, 
dithyrambic  —  might  seem  the  work  of  either  Clough 
or  Matthew  Arnold,  and  "A  Mood"  and  "The  Foun- 
tain of  Youth"  are  quite  in  sympathy  with  that  of 
the  last-named  poet.  Arnold,  like  Lowell,  delights 
in  "  accidentals "  and  in  haunting  measures,  often  ad- 
mirably rendered.  But  I  think  few  of  his  lines  are 
both  so  suggestive  and  so  vibratory  as  these  from 
Lowell's  exquisite  fantasy,  "In  the  Twilight":  — 

"  Sometimes  a  breath  floats  by  me, 
An  odor  from  Dreamland  sent, 
That  makes  the  ghost  seem  nigh  me 
Of  a  splendor  that  came  and  went, 
Of  a  life  lived  somewhere,  I  know  not 

In  what  diviner  sphere, 
Of  memories  that  stay  not  and  go  not, 
Like  music  once  heard  by  an  ear 
That  cannot  forget  or  reclaim  it,— 
A  something  so  shy,  it  would  shame  it 

To  make  it  a  show, 
A  something  too  vague,  could  I  name  it, 

For  others  to  know, 
As  if  I  had  lived  it  or  dreamed  it, 
As  if  I  had  acted  or  schemed  it, 
Long  ago! 


Lowell, 
Clough, 
and  Mat- 
thew A  r- 
void.     Cp. 
'-'Victo- 
rian Po- 
ets»:pp. 
243.  244, 
and  pp. 
95-99* 


34Q 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 


Lowell 
and  Ar- 
nold. 


**  And  yet,  could  I  live  it  over, 
This  life  that  stirs  in  my  brain, 
Could  I  be  both  maiden  and  lover, 
Moon  and  tide,  bee  and  clover, 

As  I  seem  to  have  been,  once  again, 
Could  I  but  speak  and  show  it, 

This  pleasure,  more  sharp  than  pain, 
That  baffles  and  lures  me  so, 
The  world  should  not  lack  a  poet, 
Such  as  it  had 
In  the  ages  glad 

Long  ago  ! " 

Between  verse  like  this,  and  that  of  Mr.  Hosea  Big- 
low,  each  definite  in  flavor,  the  range  is  phenomenal 
To  extend  a  comparison  made  for  the  sole  purpose 
of  illustrating  Lowell's  bent,  I  will  say  that  in  a  for- 
mer review  I  extolled  the  beauty  of  Arnold's  objecv 
tive  verse  —  a  kind  to  which  his  early  preface  would 
restrict  the  modern  poet.  But  with  reference  to  his 
occasional  hardness  of  touch,  and  to  the  mental  con- 
flicts revealed  by  Clough  and  himself,  I  scarcely  did 
full  justice  to  a  suggestive  class  of  his  poems,  in  a 
form  peculiarly  his  own,  —  poems  which  grow  upon 
the  reader  and  stand  the  test  of  years,  —  and  of 
these  I  will  name,  as  good  examples,  "  The  Buried 
Life"  and  "A  Summer  Night."  Lowell  and  Arnold, 
poets  nearly  equal  in  years,  both  scholars,  both  orig- 
inal thinkers,  occupy  representative  positions,  —  the 
one  in  the  Old  England  and  the  other  in  the  New,  — 
which  are  singularly  correspondent.  Two  things,  how- 
ever, are  to  be  noted.  The  American  has  the  freer 
hand  and  wider  range  as  a  poet.  Humor,  dialect- 
verse,  and  familiar  epistles  come  from  him  as  nat- 
urally as  his  stateliest  odes.  Again,  while  both  poets 
feel  the  perplexities  of  the  time,  Arnold's  difficulties 
are  the  more  restrictive  of  his  poetic  glow;  with  him 


LOWELL  AND  ARNOLD. 


341 


the  impediments  are  spiritual,  with  Lowell  they  are 
material  and  to  be  overcome.  Mr.  Lowell  at  times 
has  found  himself  restricted  by  our  local  conditions 
set  forth  in  my  early  chapters.  Like  Mr.  Arnold,  he 
also  feels  the  questioning  spirit  of  our  age  of  unrest ; 
but  his  nature  is  too  various  and  healthy  to  be  de- 
pressed by  it.  The  cloud  rests  more  durably  on  Ar- 
nold. Lowell  always  has  one  refuge,  —  to  which,  also, 
the  poet  of  the  Highland  "  Bothie  "  did  not  resort  in 
vain.  Give  him  a  touch  of  Mother  Earth,  a  breath 
of  free  air,  one  flash  of  sunshine,  and  he  is  no  longer 
a  book-man  and  a  brooder;  his  blood  runs  riot  with 
the  Spring;  this  inborn,  poetic  elasticity  is  the  best 
gift  of  the  gods.  Faith  and  joy  are  the  ascensive 
forces  of  song.  Lowell  trusts  in  Nature  and  she 
gladdens  him.  How  free  and  unjaded  the  spirit  of 
"Al  Fresco,"  and  of  the  sprayey  "Pictures  from  Ap- 
pledore  !  "     At  times  he  places  you 

"  So  nigh  to  the  .  .  .  heart  of  God, 
You  almost  seem  to  feel  it  beat 
Down  from  the  sunshine  and  up  from  the  sod." 

Men  are  no  less  near  to  him.  Like  Thoreau,  —  who 
knew  the  world,  having  "  travelled  "  many  years  in 
Concord,  —  he  believes  that 

"  Whatever  moulds  of  various  brain 
E'er  shaped  the  world  to  weal  or  woe, 
Whatever  empires  wax  and  wane, 
To  him  that  hath  not  eyes  in  vain 
Our  village-microcosm  can  show." 

His  rustics  act  and  speak  for  themselves.  Some  of 
his  lyrics  are  as  dramatic,  in  their  way,  as  those  of 
Browning,  —  a  poet  whose  erratic  temper,  also,  is  not 
unlike  his  own. 

It  is  worth  the  consideration  of  those  who  deplore 
the  effect  of  "  over-culture "  upon  our  poets,  that  the 


In 

sympathy 

with 
Nature, 


and  with 
men. 


342 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 


The  ques- 
tion of  cul- 
ture.    Cp. 
"  Victo- 
rian 
Poets"'': 
f.  1 20. 


"  The  Ca- 
thedral," 
1870. 


Style. 


verse  of  Lowell  and  Emerson  seems  the  product  of 
their  instant  moods.  The  highest  culture  has  learned 
to  unlearn,  and  Lowell,  when  he  wrote  "A  Winter 
Hymn  to  my  Fire,"  had  surely  reached  its  freehold. 
A  masterly,  unstinted  improvisation  —  the  freshness 
of  youth,  with  the  off-hand  ease  of  an  accomplished 
workman  —  the  mellow  thought  and  rich  imagination 
of  a  poet  in  his  prime.  Lowell's  culture  has  not  bred 
in  him  an  undue  respect  for  polish,  and  for  estab- 
lished ways  and  forms.  Precisely  the  opposite.  Much 
learning  and  a  fertile  mind  incline  him  to  express  mi- 
nute shades  of  his  fancy  by  a  most  iconoclastic  use  of 
words  and  prefixes.  This  trait  lessened  the  dignity 
of  his  blank-verse  poem,  The  Cathedral,  admired  for  its 
noble  passages  and  justly  censured  for  things  that  jar 
and  seem  out  of  place.  It  is  not  so  much  a  stately 
pile,  conforming  to  itself,  that  has  risen  "  like  an  ex- 
halation," as  a  structure  builded  part  by  part,  and  at 
different  periods  of  grandeur  or  grotesqueness.  Con- 
trast the  imposing  finale  —  the  dome  of  the  edifice  — 
with  the  whimsical  by-play  of  the  tourists  airing  their 
French.  A  sensitive  reader,  himself  a  poet  and  critic, 
not  long  ago  said  to  me  that  he  never  could  wholly 
forgive  Mr.  Lowell  for  using  the  word  "undispriva- 
cied  "  in  this  elevated  poem.  But  I  do  not  know  in 
/what  other  production  the  changeful  thoughts  of  a 
mind  swiftly  considering  the  most  complex  modern 
problems,  are  caught  so  naturally,  and  as  if  on  the 
instant  by  some  psychographic  process.  "A  Fa- 
miliar Epistle,"  without  the  extreme  finish  of  Dobson's 
work,  adds  no  less  to  the  raciness  of  Swift  or  Gay 
a  poet's  blood  and  fire.  It  has  been  said  that  Low- 
ell's verse  and  prose  are  marked  by  a  manner,  rather 
than  by  style,  in  the  modern  sense,  —  which  latter  I 
take   to    be    an    airy,   elusive  perfection   of  language 


COMMEMORATION  ODE.' 


343 


and  syntax,  that  of  itself  wins  the  reader,  and  upon 
which  writers  of  a  new  school  have  built  up  reputa- 
tions. The  thought,  the  purpose,  —  these  are  the 
main  ends  with  Lowell,  though  prose  or  metre  suffer 
for  it,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  his  manner  ex- 
actly repeats  his  habit  of  mind ;  and  so  in  this  case, 
as  ever,  the  style  is  again  the  man.  My  own  ex- 
planation of  things  which  annoy  us  in  his  loftier 
pieces  is  that  his  every-day  genius  is  that  of  wit 
and  humor.  His  familiar  and  satiric  writings  are 
consistent  works  of  art.  It  is  upon  his  serious  and 
exalted  moods  that  these  things  seem  to  intrude,  like 
the  whisperings  of  the  Black  Man  in  the  ears  of  a 
Puritan  at  prayers. 

Where  he  has  bravely  exorcised  his  annoyer  is  in 
the  lyric  efforts  that  hold  a  poet  responsible,  not  only 
to  himself,  but  also  to  the  needs  of  great  occasions. 
In  these  there  is  nothing  erratic  or  perverse.  The 
handiwork  is  unequal,  but  not  seldom  the  vigorous 
intellect  and  throbbing  heart  of  the  man  lift  him  to 
the  airiest  heights  of  a  nation's  song.  I  refer,  of 
course,  to  his  odes,  delivered  since  the  close  of  our 
civil  war. 

Of  these  the  first,  and  strongest,  is  the  Ode  Recited 
at  the  Harvard  Commemoration.  The  poet  was  fresh 
from  the  woes  and  exaltations  of  the  war.  He  had 
an  occasion  that  comes  but  once  in  a  lifetime.  The 
day,  the  place,  the  memories  of  inexorable  events, 
his  heart  wrung  with  its  own  losses  and  sharing  the 
proud  grief  of  his  Alma  Mater,  —  these  all  united 
to  call  forth  Mr.  Lowell's  highest  powers.  Another 
poet  would  have  composed  a  less  unequal  ode ;  no 
American  could  have  glorified  it  with  braver  pas- 
sages, with  whiter  heat,  with  language  and  imagery 
so  befitting  impassioned   thought.     Tried  by  the  rule 


Rationale 

o/LoweWs 

manner. 


The  "Com- 
memora- 
tion Ode? 
1865. 


344 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 


that  a  true  poet  is  at  his  best  with  the  greatest  theme, 
Lowell's  strength  is  indisputable.  The  ode  is  no 
smooth-cut  block  from  Pentelicus,  but  a  mass  of 
rugged  quartz,  beautified  with  prismatic  crystals,  and 
deep-veined  here  and  there  with  virgin  gold.  The 
early  strophes,  though  opening  with  a  fine  abrupt  line, 
"  Weak  -  winged  is  song,"  are  scarcely  firm  and  in- 
cisive. Lowell  had  to  work  up  to  his  theme.  In  the 
third  division,  "  Many  loved  Truth,  and  lavished  life's 
best  oil,"  he  struck  upon  a  new  and  musical  intona- 
tion of  the  tenderest  thoughts.  The  quaver  of  this 
melodious  interlude  carries  the  ode  along,  until  the 
great  strophe  is  reached, — 

"Such  was  he,  our  Martyr-Chief," 

in  which  the  man,  Abraham  Lincoln,  whose  death 
had  but  just  closed  the  national  tragedy,  is  delineated 
in  a  manner  that  gives  this  poet  a  preeminence,  among 
those  who  capture  likeness  in  enduring  verse,  that  we 
award  to  Velasquez  among  those  who  fasten  it  upon 
the  canvas.  "  One  of  Plutarch's  men  "  is  before  us, 
face  to  face  :  an  historic  character  whom  Lowell  fully 
comprehended,  and  to  whose  height  he  reached  in  this 
great  strophe.  Scarcely  less  fine  is  his  tearful,  yet 
transfiguring,  Avete  to  the  sacred  dead  of  the  Com- 
memoration. The  weaker  divisions  of  the  produc- 
tion furnish  a  background  to  these  passages,  and  at 
the  close  the  poet  rises  with  the  invocation,  — 

"  Bow  down,  dear  Land,  for  thou  hast  found  release  !  " 

—  a  strain  which  shows  that  when  Lowell  determinedly 
sets  his  mouth  to  the  trumpet,  the  blast  is  that  of 
Roncesvalles.  Three  other  heroic  odes  were  com- 
posed, it  is  just  to  repeat,  "  after  he  had  precluded 
himself,"  by  the  Harvard  poem,    "from  many  of  the 


'  THREE  MEMORIAL  POEMS.' 


345 


natural  outlets  of  thought  and  feeling."  That  upon 
Washington,  delivered  "Under  the  Old  Elm,"  is  the 
longest  and  most  imposing.  Despite  its  form,  it  is 
too  long  for  an  ode,  and  Mr.  Lowell  has  more  fitly 
entitled  it  a  poem.  The  characterization  of  Wash- 
ington is  less  bold  and  sympathetic  than  that  of  Lin- 
coln. Better  the  superb  tribute  to  the  Mother  of 
Presidents,  — 

"Virginia  gave  us  this  imperial  man," 

which  ends  the  poem  with  forty  unbroken  lines  that 
again  bring  us  to  the  height  of  Lowell's  power.  The 
closing  strophes  of  the  Centennial  Ode  —  "  Flawless 
his  hand,"  and  "They  steered  by  stars  the  elder 
shipmen  knew  "  —  are  quite  as  notable.  Underwood 
has  called  the  three  odes  an  Alpine  group,  —  yet 
each  in  its  length  and  unevenness  brings  to  mind  a 
Rocky  Mountain  chain,  in  which  snow-clad,  sunlit 
peaks  arise,  connected  by  vaguely  outlined  ridges  of 
the  Sierra. 

In  a  passage  of  the  last-named  ode   there  is  food 
for  thought  between  the  lines  :  — 

"  Poets,  as  their  heads  grow  gray, 
Look  from  too  far  behind  the  eyes, 
Too  long-experienced  to  be  wise 
In  guileless  youth's  diviner  way; 
Life  sings  not  now,  but  prophesies." 

But  the  second-sight  of  age  has  been  always,  I  have 
said,  a  portion  of  Lowell's  strength  and  disability. 
One  thing,  perhaps,  is  needed  to  make  his  career 
ideal  :  some  adequate  theme,  and  mode  of  treatment, 
for  a  work  of  pure  poetry,  that  shall  be,  through  its 
imaginative  beauty,  the  rival  and  complement  of  his 
serio-comic  masterpiece.  "  Fitz-Adam's  Story,"  a  por- 
tion  of  the  long-projected  "  Nooning,"   indicates  one 


"The  Un- 
finished 
Window." 


346 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 


Recapitu- 
lation. 


direction  in  which  he  has  felt  his  way;  but  he  has 
not  followed  up  the  clew  with  the  unhasting,  unresting 
purpose  that  distinguished  Longfellow.  Even  now,  and 
after  his  more  heroic  nights,  it  might  be  a  diversion 
to  his  later  years,  and  certainly  would  revive  an  in- 
terest in  American  verse,  if  he  would  go  back  and 
complete  "The  Nooning,"  making  it,  as  he  can,  the 
most  charming  of  New  England's  idyllic  poems. 


VI. 


Lowell,  then,  is  a  poet  who  seems  to  represent 
New  England  more  variously  than  either  of  his  com- 
rades. We  find  in  his  work,  as  in  theirs,  her  loyalty 
and  moral  purpose.  She  has  been  at  cost  for  his 
training,  and  he,  in  turn,  has  read  her  heart,  honor- 
ing her  as  a  mother  before  the  world,  and  seeing 
beauty  in  her  common  garb  and  speech.  To  him, 
the  Eastern  States  are  what  the  fathers,  as  he  has 
said,  desired  to  found, — no  New  Jerusalem,  but  a 
new  England,  and,  if  it  might  be,  a  better  one.  His 
poetry  has  the  strength,  the  tenderness,  and  the  de- 
fects of  the  down-East  temper.  His  doctrines  and 
reflections,  in  the  midst  of  an  ethereal  distillation,  at 
times  act  like  the  single  drop  of  prose  which,  as  he 
reports  a  saying  of  Landor  to  Wordsworth,  precipi- 
tates the  whole.  But  again  he  is  all  poet,  and  the 
blithest,  most  unstudied  songster  on  the  old  Bay 
Shore.  He  is,  just  as  truly,  an  American  of  the  Amer- 
icans, alive  to  the  idea  and  movement  of  the  whole 
country,  singularly  independent  in  his  tests  of  its  men 
and  products — from  whatever  section,  or  in  however 
unpromising  form,  they  chance  to  appear.  Many  have 
found  him  the  surest  to  detect  and  welcome,  at  the 


HIS  GENIUS  AND  RECORD. 


347 


time  when  welcome  was  needed  and  lesser  men  held 
back,  what  there  might  be  in  them  of  worth.  He  is 
an  artist  who  recognizes  things  outside  of  art,  and 
would  not  rate  the  knack  of  writing  lines  to  a  lady's 
girdle  above  all  other  wonders  of  the  age.  In  default 
of  the  motive  for  a  sustained  and  purely  ideal  work, 
he  has  awaited  the  visits  of  the  Muse,  and  acted  on 
the  moment  at  her  bidding  j  none  of  our  poets,  in- 
deed, has  so  thrown  the  responsibility  on  a  monitor 
whom  no  industry  can  placate,  who  is  deaf  to  en- 
treaty, but  gives  without  stint  at  her  own  will.  He 
will  sing  when  she  bids  him,  or  not  at  all.  But  this 
is  in  the  nature  of  genius,  and  thus  brings  me  to  a 
conclusion.  The  world  readily  perceives  the  genius 
that  is  set  off  by  an  eccentric  or  turbid  life.  Taking 
advantage  of  this,  false  Amphitryons  often  vaunt  them- 
selves for  a  while.  But  let  a  true  poet  be  born  to 
culture  and  position,  and  have  a  share  of  things  which 
constitute  good  fortune,  and  his  rarer  gift  has  no  ro- 
mantic aid  to  bring  it  into  notice  :  its  recognition 
comes  solely  through  its  product,  and  not  fully  until 
"  after  some  time  be  past."  And  if  Lowell  be  not, 
first  of  all,  an  original  genius,  I  know  not  where  to 
look  for  one.  Judged  by  his  personal  bearing,  who  is 
brighter,  more  persuasive,  more  equal  to  the  occasion 
and  himself,  —  less  open  to  Doudan's  stricture  upon 
writers  who  hoard  and  store  up  their  thoughts  for  the 
betterment  of  their  printed  works  ?  Lowell's  treasury 
can  stand  the  drafts  of  both  speech  and  composition. 
Judged  by  his  works,  as  a  poet  in  the  end  must  be,  he 
is  one  who  might  gain  by  revision  and  compression. 
But  think,  as  is  his  due,  upon  the  high-water  marks  of 
his  abundant  tide,  and  see  how  enviable  the  record  of 
a  poet  who  is  our  most  brilliant  and  learned  critic,  and 
who  has   given  us   our  best  native  idyl,  our  best  and 


A  poet  of 

original 

genius. 


348 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 


most  complete  work  in  dialectic  verse,  and  the  noblest 
heroic  ode  that  America  has  produced,  —  each  and  all 
ranking  with  the  first  of  their  kinds  in  English  litera- 
ture of  the  modern  time. 


CHAPTER    X. 


WALT  WHITMAN. 


OF  things  counted  dear  to  a  minstrel's  heart,  and 
which  can  make  him  patiently  endure  the  com- 
mon ills  of  life,  this  poet  has  secured  a  bounteous 
share.  No  one  more  conspicuously  shines  by  differ- 
ence. Others  are  more  widely  read,  but  who  else  has 
been  so  widely  talked  of,  and  who  has  held  even  a 
few  readers  with  so  absolute  a  sway?  Whatever  we 
may  think  of  his  chantings,  the  time  has  gone  by 
when  it  was  possible  to  ignore  him;  whatever  his 
ground  may  be,  he  has  set  his  feet  squarely  and 
audaciously  upon  it,  and  is  no  light  weight.  En- 
deavor, then,  to  judge  him  on  his  merits,  for  he  will 
and  must  be  judged.  He  stands  in  the  roadway,  with 
his  Salut  au  Monde :  — 

"Toward  all 
I  raise  high  the  perpendicular  hand,  —  I  make  the  signal, 
To  remain  after  me  in  sight  forever, 
For  all  the  haunts  and  homes  of  men." 

There  are  not  wanting  those  who  return  his  saluta- 
tion. He  is  in  very  good  society,  and  has  been  so  for 
a  long  while.  At  the  outset  he  was  favored  with  the 
hand  of  Emerson,  and,  once  acknowledged  at  court, 
allies  quickly  flocked  around  him.  No  writer  holds, 
in  some  respects,  a  more  enviable  place  than  burly 
Walt  Whitman.     As  for  public  opinion  of  the  profes- 


Walter 
Whitman 
born  in 
West 
Hills, 
Long- 
Island, 
May  31, 
18 19. 


A  chal- 
lenger. 


350 


WALT  WHITMAN. 


Publicity 
at  hotne 
and 
abroad. 


Incidental 
successes. 


A  difficult 
foet  to  esti- 
mate. 


The  debate 
concerning 
him. 


sional  kind,  no  American  poet,  save  Longfellow,  has 
attracted  so  much  notice  as  he  in  England,  France, 
Germany,  and  I  know  not  what  other  lands.  Personal 
items  of  his  doings,  sayings,  and  appearance  constantly 
have  found  their  way  to  the  public.  In  a  collection 
of  sketches,  articles,  debates,  which  have  appeared 
during  the  last  fifteen  years,  relating  to  American 
poets,  the  Whitman  and  Poe  packages,  before  the 
deaths  of  Emerson  and  Longfellow,  were  each  much 
larger  than  all  the  rest  combined.  Curiously  enough, 
three  fourths  of  the  articles  upon  Whitman  are  written 
by  friends  who  assert  that  he  is  neglected  by  the 
press.  Not  only  in  that  publicity  which  is  akin  to 
fame,  and  stimulating  to  the  poet,  has  he  been  thus 
fortunate  \  but  also  in  the  faculty  of  exciting  and  sus- 
taining a  discussion  in  which  he  has  been  forced  to 
take  little  part  himself;  in  an  aptitude  for  making 
disciples  of  men  able  to  gain  the  general  ear,  and 
vying  with  one  another  to  stay  up  his  hands;  in  his 
unencumbered,  easy  way  of  life;  finally,  in  a  bodily 
and  mental  equipment,  and  a  tact  or  artistic  instinct 
to  make  the  most  of  it,  that  have  established  a  vigor- 
ous ideal  of  himself  as  a  bard  and  seer.  These  inci- 
dental successes,  which  of  course  do  not  confirm  nor 
conflict  with  an  estimate  of  his  genius,  are  brought  to 
mind  as  the  features  of  a  singular  career. 

Such  a  poet  must  find  a  place  in  any  review  of 
the  course  of  American  song.  Otherwise,  however 
observant  of  his  work  from  the  beginning,  I  well 
might  hesitate  to  express  my  own  judgment  of  thoughts 
and  modes  which,  like  questions  in  philology  or  med- 
icine, seem  to  provoke  contention  in  which  men  act 
very  much  like  children  and  little  to  the  advantage  of 
all  concerned.  The  disputants  who  arise  when  an 
innovator    comes    along    never    were    divided     more 


A   FAIR  MODE  OF  CRITICISM. 


351 


sharply,  —  not  even  in  that  classico-romantic  conflict 
which  would  have  made  the  fortune  of  a  lesser  poet 
than  the  author  of  "  Hernani."  Perhaps  it  would  be 
found,  upon  examination,  that  the  class  which  declines 
to  regard  Whitman  as  a  hero  and  poet  has  been  con- 
tent with  saying  very  little  about  him.  If  his  disciples 
are  in  a  minority,  it  is  they  who  chiefly  have  written 
the  contents  of  the  package  mentioned,  who  never 
lose  a  point,  who  have  filled  the  air  with  his  name. 
Our  acceptance  of  their  estimate  almost  has  seemed 
the  condition  of  their  intellectual  respect.  At  times 
we  are  constrained  to  infer  that  this  poet  is  to  be 
canonized,  not  criticised,  —  that  he,  they  and  others 
may  say  to  Emerson,  Lowell,  Tennyson,  "  Thou  ailest 
here,  and  here  "  ;  but  woe  unto  them  that  lay  hands 
on  the  Ark  of  the  Covenant.  Two  points  belong  to 
my  own  mode  of  inquiry  :  How  far  does  the  effort  of  a 
workman  relate  to  what  is  fine  and  enduring?  and, 
how  far  does  he  succeed  in  his  effort  ?  Nor  can  I 
pay  Mr.  Whitman  any  worthier  tribute  than  to  ex- 
amine fairly  his  credentials,  and  to  test  his  work  by 
the  canons,  so  far  as  we  discover  them,  that  underlie 
the  best  results  of  every  progressive  art.  I  recall  his 
own  comment  on  Emerson:  "As  I  understand  him, 
the  truest  honor  you  can  pay  him  is  to  try  his  own 
rules."  If  his  poetry  is  founded  in  the  simplicity  and 
universality  which  are  claimed  for  it,  and  which  dis- 
tinguish great  works,  the  average  man,  who  reads 
Shakespeare  and  the  English  Bible,  ought  to  catch 
glimpses  of  its  scope  and  meaning,  and  therefore  I 
am  guilty  of  no  strange  temerity  in  forming  some 
opinion  of  these  matters. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  there  be  any  so  impatient 
of  his  assumptions,  or  so  tired  of  the  manifestoes  of 
his  friends,  as  to  refuse    him  the  consideration  they 


Points  and 
method  of 
inquiry. 


Fair  play. 


352 


W 'ALT  WHITMAN. 


A  roman- 
tic and  sig- 
nificant 
bearing. 


The 

fersonal 

equation. 


would  extend  to  any  man  alive,   against  such   also  I 
would  protest,  and  deem  them  neither  just  nor  wise. 
Their  course  would  give  weight  to  the  charge  that  in 
America  Whitman  has  been  subjected  to   a   kind   of 
outlawry.     And  those  most  doubtful  of  his  methods, 
beliefs,  inspiration,  should  understand  that  here  is  an 
uncommon    and   striking    figure,    which   they   will    do 
well  to   observe;  one   whose   words  have   taken  hold 
in  various  quarters,  and  whose  works  should  be  stud- 
ied as  a  whole  before  they  are  condemned.     Not  only 
a  poet,  but  a  personage,  of   a  bearing   conformed  to 
his    ideal.      Whether    this    bearing   comes   by   nature 
only,  or  through  skilful  intent,  its  possessor  certainly 
carries  it  bravely,  and,   as  the  phrase  is,  fills  the  bill, 
—  a  task  in  which  some  who  have  tried  to  emulate 
him  have   disastrously   failed.     Not  only  a  poet  and 
personage,  but  one  whose  views  and  declarations  are 
also  worth  attention.     True,  our  main  business  is  not 
so  much  to  test  the  soundness  of   his  theories  as  to 
ask  how  poetically  he  has  announced  them.     We  are 
examining  the  poets,  not  the  sages  and  heroes,  except 
in   so    far  as   wisdom    and    heroism   must  belong   to 
poetry.     But  Whitman  is  the  most  subjective  poet  on 
record.      The   many  who  look   upon  art   solely  as  a 
means  of  expression  justly  will  not  be  content  unless 
the  man  is  included  in  the  problem.     I,  who  believe 
that  he  who  uses  song  as  his  means  of  expression  is 
on  one  side  an  artist,  wish  to  consider  him  both  as 
an  artist  and  a  man. 

Questions  involving  the  nature  of  verse,  of  ex- 
pression, of  the  poetic  life,  cannot  be  adequately  dis- 
cussed in  a  single  chapter;  but  a  paragraph,  at  least, 
may  be  devoted  to  each  point,  and  should  be  given 
its  full  weight  of  meaning.  It  is  the  fashion  for 
many  who   reject  Whitman's   canticles  to  say:    "His 


HIS  LIFE  AND  HIS  SONG. 


353 


poetry  is   good  for   nothing  ;   but   we    like   him  as   a 
man,"   etc.     To  me,  it   seems  that  his  song  is  more 
noteworthy  than  his  life,  in  spite   of   his   services   in 
the   hospitals   during   our  civil   war.      His  life,   at  its 
best  periods,  was  an  emblem  of    the  nobleness  of  a 
multitude  of  his  country-men  and   country-women ;  at 
other  times,  doubtless,  and   as  his   poem  of  "  Brook- 
lyn Ferry  "  permits  us  to  surmise,  it  has  been  no  more 
self-forgetting  than  the  lives  of  countless  obscure  toil- 
ers who  do  their  best  from  day  to  day.     If,  then,  I 
do  not  think  his  heroism  so  important  as  his  art,  nor 
admire  him  chiefly  as  an  annunciator,  but  as  a  poet, 
it  is  because   I   know  more  than   one  village  where 
each  workman  is  a  philosopher  in  his  way,  and  some- 
thing of  a  priest,  and  because  poets  are  rarer  among 
us  than  preachers  and  heroes,  —  and  I  wish  to  take 
him  at  his  rarest.     That  there  may  be  no  doubt,  from 
page  to  page  (amid  the  seeming  inconsistencies  that 
must   characterize   a   study   of    Whitman),    as   to   my 
conclusion  on  this  point,  I  may  as  well  say  now  that 
both  instinct  and  judgment,  with  our  Greek  choruses 
in   mind,  and   Pindar,    and   the    Hebrew   bards,    long 
since  led  me  to  number  him  among  the  foremost  lyric 
and  idyllic  poets.     If  any  fail  to  perceive  what  I  mean 
by   this,    let  him   take   a   single   poem,    composed   in 
Whitman's  finer   mood, —  "Out   of   the   Cradle    End- 
lessly Rocking,"  — "and  read   it  with  some  care.     Had 
he  not  chanted  like  this,  the  exorbitant  world  would 
hear   little   of  his  philosophy   and    consecration,   and 
care  for  them   still   less.     Yet   it   is  no  less  plain  to 
me,  reading  long  and  often  his  early  volume,  —  "  start- 
ing from    Paumanok  "   with    this   full-throated    poet, 
—  that   many  years   ago  he  formed  an  inspired   and 
inspiring  conception  of  the  spirit  and  destiny  of  his 
own   land,   his  own  people,    and   of  the    future  of  a 
23 


Whit- 
man's life 
not  so  ex- 
ceptional 
as  his 
works. 


Without 
doubt  a 
poet  of 
lyric  and 
idyllic 
genius. 


354 


WALT  WHITMAN. 


"Leaves  of 
Grass  "  ; 
Brooklyn, 

1855. 


Reviewed 
in  "  Put- 
nam's 
Monthly 
Maga- 
zine." 


world  guided  by  the  example  of  our  continental  De- 
mocracy ;  and  that,  —  whatever  his  personal  ambi- 
tion, motive,  strength,  or  weakness,  —  he  bravely  and 
with  true  genius  set  forth  this  conception  by  methods 
as  bold  and  free  as  that  which  they  expressed. 
What  that  conception  was  is  to  be  discovered  most 
readily  in  the  poems  which  embody  it,  and  not  in  one 
but  in  the  mass  of  them  from  that  day  to  this.  He 
singularly  fails  to  convey  it  with  justice  to  himself  in 
the  rhetorical  preface  to  the  second  volume  of  his 
Centennial  edition. 


II. 

The  first  edition  of  Leaves  of  Grass,  now  so  val- 
ued by  collectors,  is  a  long,  thin  volume,  curious  to 
behold,  with  wide  pages  that  give  the  author's  pecul- 
iar lines  their  full  effect.  Here  was  a  man  with  meas- 
ureless "  bounce "  and  ambition,  but  with  a  coequal 
range  of  demands  for  his  country,  and  professedly 
for  all  mankind.  At  that  time  the  sale  of  most  books 
of  poetry  or  abstract  thought  was  small  enough  ; 
critical  authorities  were  few,  and  of  little  weight. 
"Putnam's  Monthly"  certainly  had  influence,  and 
was  the  periodical  to  which  our  favorite  writers  con- 
tributed some  of  their  choicest  work.  Its  reviewer 
gave  the  strange  book  the  best  *  reception  possible, 
by  filling  three  columns  with  extracts  from  its  pages. 
He  could  not  have  selected  any  passages  more  orig- 
inal than  those  beginning  with  the  lines,  "  I  play  not 
a  march  for  victors  only,"  and  "A  child  said,  What 
is  the  grass  ? "  —  than  the  death-scene  of  the  mashed 
fireman,  for  whose  sake  is  the  pervading  hush  among 
the  kneeling  crowd,  —  the  ringing  story  of  the  old- 
fashioned  frigate   and  the  little  captain  who  won   by 


'LEAVES   OF  GRASS: 


355 


the  light  of  the  moon  and  stars,  —  the  proud  humil- 
ity, the  righteous  irony  and  wrath  of  "  A  Slave  at 
Auction"  and  "A  Woman  at  Auction,"  —  the  He- 
braic picture  of  the  Quakeress  with  face  clearer  and 
more  beautiful  than  the  sky,  "the  justified  mother 
of  men."  These,  and  a  few  masterly  bits  of  descrip- 
tion and  apostrophe,  were  given  in  a  manner  just  to 
the  poet,  while  rude  and  coarser  parts,  that  might 
displease  even  a  progressive  reader,  were  kindly  over- 
looked. The  study  of  Emerson  and  Carlyle  had  bred 
a  tolerance  of  whatever  was  true  to  nature  and  op- 
posed to  sham.  "  Leaves  of  Grass  "  was  a  legitimate 
offspring  of  the  new  movement.  Howsoever  differing 
from  the  latter,  or  going  beyond  it,  the  book  would 
not  have  found  life  had  not  the  Concord  school  al- 
ready made  for  it  an  atmosphere.  Whitman  —  a  man 
of  the  people  —  applied  the  down-East  philosophy  to 
the  daily  walks  of  life,  and  sang  the  blare  and  brawn 
that  he  found  in  the  streets  about  him.  In  his  open- 
ing  lines:  — 

"I  celebrate  myself; 
And  what  I  assume  you  shall  assume ; 
For  every  atom  belonging  to  me  as  good  belongs  to  you. 

"  I  loafe  and  invite  my  soul ; 
I  lean    and    loafe   at    my    ease  .  .  .  observing  a  spear  of 
summer  grass," 

he  simply  took  Alcott  and  Emerson  at  their  word. 
His  radical  demonstration,  extended  in  later  years 
even  to  rebuke  of  their  own  failure  to  go  farther, 
brought  them,  perchance,  like  Frankenstein,  to  re- 
gard with  little  complacence  the  strides  of  their  prod- 
igy. The  difference  between  Emerson  and  Whitman 
illustrated  that  between  certain  modes  of  advanced 
thought  in   Massachusetts   and   New   York.      If    the 


The  tran- 
scendentat 
movement, 


Massachu- 
setts vs. 
NewYorh 


35^ 


IV ALT   WHITMAN. 


Class 
feeling. 


First  im- 
pressions 
of  this 
poetry. 


philosophy  of  the  former  professed  to  include  the  peo- 
ple, in  its  genesis  and  application  it  often  was  some- 
what provincial  and  aristocratic ;  the  other  also  was 
theoretically  broad,  professing  to  include  the  schol- 
arly and  refined,  but  in  spirit  was  no  less  provincial, 
—  suspicious  of  all  save  the  masses.  A  true  univer- 
salism  yet  may  come  from  them  both.  It  was  in  no 
unfriendly  humor,  but  with  perfect  justice,  that  the 
"  Putnam "  critic  declared  the  new  poems  to  be  a 
"  mixture  of  Yankee  transcendentalism  and  New  York 
rowdyism,"  which  here  were  "seen  to  combine  in  har- 
mony." For  their  author  prophesied  in  New  York 
with  a  selfhood  that  observed  but  kept  aloof  from 
the  West  side  ;  insensibly  the  East-sider  was  set  above 
the  man  of  training  or  affairs  whose  teams  he  drove, 
whose  fires  he  subdued,  whose  boats  he  piloted,  and 
whose  manhood  perchance  was  as  sturdy  and  virile 
as  his  own.  Hence,  there  was  a  just  reason  in  the 
pleasantry  of  the  reviewer,  who,  after  acknowledging 
that  the  poet  was  "one  of  the  roughs,"  said:  "That 
he  is  a  kosmos  is  a  piece  of  news  we  were  hardly 
prepared  for.  Precisely  what  a  kosmos  is,  we  trust 
Mr.  Whitman  will  take  an  early  occasion  to  inform 
the  impatient  world."  Nothing  worse  than  this  sally 
befell  our  poet  in  the  leading  magazine,  and  it  was 
added  that  there  were  to  be  found  "  an  original  per- 
ception of  nature,  a  manly  brawn,  and  an  epic  di- 
rectness in  the  new  poet,  which  belong  to  no  other 
adept  of  the  transcendental  school."  Here,  at  all 
events,  the  book  was  not  treated  after  any  Philistine 
mode. 

Doubtless  many  young  readers  of  those  quotations 
felt  as  if  they  came  with  a  fresh  breeze  from  old 
Paumanok  and  the  outer  bay.  I  remember  my  own 
impression  that  here,  whether  his  forms  were  old  or 


FIRST  IMPRESSIONS. 


357 


new,  was  a  real  poet,  one  who  stirred  my  pulses; 
and  of  whom  —  in  spite  of  his  conceit,  familiarity,  as- 
sumption that  few  could  understand  him  and  that  all 
needed  his  ministrations  —  I  wished  to  know  more. 
I  would  not  surrender  that  first  impression  of  his 
genius  for  any  later  critical  feeling.  Nor  since  that 
time,  having  closely  read  him,  have  I  found  reason 
to  disavow  it.  And  I  could  sympathize  with  him,  now 
that  his  old  age  really  is  at  hand,  in  the  serene  ap- 
proval of  his  own  work,  read  twenty  years  afterward, 
under  some  ominous  conjunction  of  Saturn  and 
Mars :  — 

■  After  an  interval,  reading,  here  in  the  midnight, 

With  the  great  stars  looking  on  —  all  the  stars  of  Orion  look- 
ing, 

And  the  silent  Pleiades  —  and  the  duo  looking  of  Saturn  and 
ruddy  Mars  ; 

Pondering,  reading  my  own  songs,  after  a  long  interval  (sorrow 
and  death  familiar  now), 

Ere  closing  the  book,  what  pride  !  what  joy !  to  find  them 

Standing  so  well  the  test  of  death  and  night, 

And  the  duo  of  Saturn  and  Mars  ! " 

The  picture  of  Whitman  in  trousers  and  open 
shirt,  with  slouched  hat,  hand  in  pocket,  and  a  defi- 
ant cast  of  manner,  resolute  as  it  was,  had  an  air 
not  wholly  of  one  who  protests  against  authority,  but 
rather  of  him  who  opposes  the  gonfalon  of  a  "  rough  " 
conventionalism  to  the  conventionalism  of  culture. 
Not  that  of  the  man  "too  proud  to  care  from 
whence"  he  came,  but  of  one  very  proud  of  whence 
he  came  and  what  he  wore.  Seeing  him  now,  with 
his  gracious  and  silvery  beard,  it  seems  hardly  possi- 
ble that  the  early  portrait  was  at  any  time  his  own. 
But  it  has  become  historical,  and  properly  is  retained 
in  later  editions. 

The  "Leaves  of   Grass"  contained  the  gist  of  his 


The  poet's 
likeness 
ami  attir 
tude. 


358 


WALT   WHITMAN. 


A  nalysis 
of  the 

'''■Leaves  of 
Grass." 


Bewilder- 
ment of  the 
critics. 


opinions,  and   some   of   its  episodes  equal   in   beauty 
anything  he  has  ever  written.     He  was  in  his   thirty- 
sixth  year,  —  close  upon  the  age  at  which  more  than 
one   famous  poet  has  ended  his  mission.     His  book 
was   eminently  one  with   a   purpose,   or  purposes,   to 
which  he  has  been  consistent.     First,  and  chiefly,  to 
assert   the    "  Religion   of   Humanity,"  —  the    mystery 
and  development  of   man,  of  woman;   the  sufficiency 
of  the  general  plan  j  the  inherent  and  equal  nobility 
of  our  organs,  instincts,  desires  \  the  absolute  equality 
of  men,  irrespective  of  birth  and  training.     Secondly, 
to  predict   a  superb  illustration  of  this  development, 
in  "  These  States,"  the  great  republic  of  the  present, 
the  pure  democracy  of  the  future.     Thirdly,  to  por- 
tray an   archetypal   microcosm,   a   man  embracing   in 
his  passionate  and  ideal  sympathy  all   the  joys,  sor- 
rows, appetites,  virtues,  sins,  of  all  men,  women,  and 
children,  —  himself   being,    doing,    and    suffering   with 
them,  —  and   that  man  Walt  Whitman.     Finally,  and 
to  lay  the  groundwork  for  a  new  era  in  literature  (in 
his  view  the  most  essential  stimulant  of  progress),  the 
"Leaves"   were   written   in   contempt   of   established 
measures,  formal  rhymes,  stock    imagery  and  diction, 
—  and  in  a  most   irregular  kind  of   dithyramb,  which 
left  the  hack  reviewer  sorely  in  doubt  whether  it  was 
verse  broken   off   at   hap-hazard,   or  prose   run   mad. 
Whatever  motives   led   to  these   results,  we   must  ad- 
mire the  courage  of  a  poet  who  thus  burned  his  ships 
behind   him,  and   plunged   into   a  wilderness   thence- 
forth all  his  own.     Various  passages  of  the  book  were 
resolutely  coarse  in  their  naturalism,  and  were  thought 
by  some,  who  perhaps   knew  little   of   the   author,  to 
reveal   his   tendencies.     It   seemed  as  if   certain  pas- 
sions appeared  to  him  more  natural,  certain  sins  more 
venial,  than  others,  and  that  these  were  those  which 


HIS  PERSONAL   CAREER. 


359 


he  felt  to  be  most  obstreperous  in  his  own  system, 
that  his  creed  was  adjusted  to  his  personal  apti- 
tudes. But  many  also  found  in  him  strength,  color, 
love,  and  knowledge  of  nature,  and  a  capacity  for 
lyrical  outbursts,  — -  the  utterance  of  a  genuine  poet. 
Such  was  the  "Leaves  of  Grass,"  although  the  book 
is  hard  to  formulate  in  few  and  scientific  terms ;  such, 
at  least,  it  was,  so  far  as  I  understand  its  higher 
meaning. 

If  the  successive  editions  of  "Leaves  of  Grass" 
had  the  quiet  sale  accorded  to  books  of  verse,  the 
work  did  not  lack  admirers  among  radicals  on  the 
lookout  for  something  new.  Emerson,  with  one  of 
his  cheery  impulses,  wrote  a  glowing  welcome,  which 
soon  was  given  to  the  public,  and  directed  all  eyes 
to  the  rising  bard.  No  poet,  as  a  person,  ever  came 
more  speedily  within  range  of  view.  His  age,  origin, 
and  habits  were  made  known  j  he  himself,  in  fastidi- 
ously studied  and  picturesque  costume,  was  to  be  ob- 
served strolling  up  Broadway,  crossing  the  ferries, 
mounting  the  omnibuses,  wherever  he  could  see  and 
be  seen,  make  studies  and  be  studied.  It  was  learned 
that  he  had  been  by  turns  printer,  school-master, 
builder,  editor;  had  written  articles  and  poems  of  a 
harmless,  customary  nature,  —  until,  finding  that  he 
could  not  express  himself  to  any  purpose  in  that  wise, 
he  underwent  conviction,  experienced  a  change  of 
thought  and  style,  and  professed  a  new  departure  in 
verse,  dress,  and  way  of  life.  Henceforward  he  oc- 
,  cupied  himself  with  loafing,  thinking,  writing,  and 
making  disciples  and  "  camerados."  Among  the  young 
wits  and  writers  who  enjoyed  his  fellowship,  his  slow, 
large  mould  and  rathe-grizzled  hair  procured  for  him 
the  hearty  title  of  "Old  Walt."  In  the  second  year 
of  the   war   his   blood   grew  warm,  and   he   went   to 


Whit- 
man's hob- 
its,  haunts, 
and  con- 
spicuous 
daily 
walk. 


Expe- 
riences 
during  tht 
War. 


360 


WALT  WHITMAN. 


A  fortu- 
nate perse- 
cution. 


"TAeGood 
Gray  Poet. 
A  Vindi- 
cation.'''' 
NewYor'k, 
1866. 


Disciples 
and 

friends  in 
Europe 
and  Amer- 
ica. 


Washington,  whither  all   roads   then   led.     His   heart 
yearned  toward  the  soldiery,  and  in  the  hospitals  and 
camps  he  became  the  tenderest  of  nurses  and  the  al- 
moner of  funds  supplied  to  him  by  generous  hands. 
After  three  years  of  this  service,  and  after  a  sickness 
brought  on  by  its  exertions,  he  was  given  a  place  in 
the  Interior  Department.     Then  came  that  senseless 
act  of  a  benighted  official,  who  dismissed  him  for  the 
immorality  of  the  "Leaves  of   Grass."     To  Whitman 
it  was  a  piece  of  good  luck.     It  brought  to  a  climax 
the  discussion  of  his  merits  and  demerits.     It  called 
out  from  the  fervent  and  learned  pen  of  William  D. 
O'Connor  a  surging,  characteristic  vindication,  "The 
Good  Gray  Poet,"  in  which  the  offending   Secretary 
was  consigned  to  ignominy,  and  by  which  the  poet's 
talents,    services,    and    appearance    were    so    fastened 
upon   public   attention   that   he   took   his   place   as   a 
hoar  and  reverend  minstrel.     He  then,  with  Lowell, 
Parsons,    Holland,    Brownell,    and    Mrs.    Howe,    had 
reached   the   patriarchal   age   of  forty -six.      Another 
Cabinet  officer,  a  man  of  taste  and  feeling,  gave  him 
a  new  position  —  which  he  held  for  nine  years,  and 
until    somewhat    disabled    by    a    paralytic    affliction. 
Meanwhile,  influential  writers,  on   both  sides   of   the 
ocean,  skilful   in   polemic  criticism,  had  avowed  alle- 
giance to  himself  and  his  works.     In  England,  W.  M. 
Rossetti  edited  a  selection  of   his  poems,  and   Swin- 
burne, Dowden,  Clifford,  Symonds,  Buchanan,  Clive, 
have  joined  in  recognizing  them.     In  America,  —  be- 
sides O'Connor,  —  Linton,  Conway,  Sanborn,  Charles 
Whiting,  the  Swintons,  Benton,  Marvin,  the  sure-eyed 
and  poetic  Burroughs,  and  others,  in  turn  have  guarded 
his  rights  or  ministered  to  him,  some  of  them  with  a 
loyalty  unprecedented   in   our   literary   annals.     Like 
Fourier,  he  may  be  said  to  have  his  propagandists  in 


THE  POET  AND  HIS  COUNTRYMEN. 


361 


many  lands.  Making  allowance  for  the  tendency  to 
invest  with  our  own  attributes  some  object  of  hero- 
worship,  a  man  must  be  of  unusual  stuff  to  breed 
this  enthusiasm  ;  and  under  any  privations  the  life 
is  a  success  which  has  created  and  sustained  such  an 
ideal. 

The  appearance  of  Whitman's  "  Centennial  edition," 
and  his  needs  at  the  time,  gave  occasion  for  an  out- 
cry concerning  American  neglect  and  persecution  of 
the  poet,  and  for  a  debate  in  which  both  London  and 
New  York  took  part.     But  little  evidence  was  found 
of  unfriendliness  to  him  among  the  magazine-editors, 
to  whom   our  writers   offer  their  wares.     Several   of 
them  averred  that  they  would  rather  accept  than  de- 
cline his  contributions;  they  had  declined  them  only 
when  unsuited  to  their  necessities.     What  magazine- 
writer  has  a  smoother  experience  ?     In  a  democracy 
the  right  most  freely  allotted  is  that  of  every  man  to 
secure  his  own  income.     Nor  am  I  aware  that,  with 
two  exceptions,  any  American  has  been  able  to  de- 
rive a  substantial  revenue  from  poetry  alone.     A  man 
ahead  of  his  time,  or  different  from  his  time,  usually 
gathers   little   of  this  world's   goods.     Whitman's  fel- 
low-countrymen   regard    him    kindly   and  with  pride. 
An   English  poet   declared   that   it  was  not  America, 
but  the  literary  class  in  America,  that  "  persecuted  " 
him.     Who  constituted  such  a  class  I  know  not,  since 
at  present  it  would  be  hard  to  find  an  American  au- 
thor or  editor  who  does   not  keep   a  warm   place   in 
his  heart  for  the  sage  of   Camden  and  hold  his  gen- 
ius in  honor.    What  opposition  the  poet  really  incurred 
has   done   him   no   harm.     The   outcry   led   to   plain- 
speaking,  and   the   press  gave   the  fullest  hearing   to 
Whitman's  friends.     It  was  of  benefit,  in  showing  that 
our  writers   were    misunderstood,   in    stimulating   his 


Charges  of 
neglect 
and  unfair 
treatment. 


362 


WALT  WHITMAN. 


"Leaves  of 
Grass." 
"  Two  Riv- 
ulets."   2 
vols.     A  u- 
thor's  Cen- 
tennial 
Edition. 
Camden, 
iV./.,i876. 

Portraits 
and  char- 
acteristics. 


Order  0/ 
contents. 


"  Drum- 
Taps." 


"Two  Riv- 
ulets." 


friends  to  new  offices  in  his  behalf,  and  especially  in 
promoting  the  sale  of  the  unique  Centennial  Edition 
(or  "  Author's  ")  of  his  collected  poems.  Never  was 
a  collection  more  aptly  named.  The  two  volumes 
bear  the  material  as  well  as  the  spiritual  impress  of 
their  author.  Of  the  many  portraits  for  which  he  has 
sat,  they  give,  besides  the  earliest,  a  bold  and  recent 
photograph,  and  the  striking  wood-cut  by  his  friend 
Linton  —  that  master  of  the  engraver's  craft.  Here 
and  there  are  interpolated  later  poems,  printed  on 
slips,  and  pasted  in  by  the  poet's  own  hand.  It  is 
Whitman,  His  Book.  The  edition  has  an  indescrib- 
able air ;  one  who  owns  it  feels  that  he  has  a  portion 
of  the  author's  self. 

The  collection  embraces  the  revised  series  of 
"  Leaves  of  Grass,"  preceded  by  "  Inscriptions,"  and 
divided  by  a  group  of  poems,  "  Children  of  Adam," 
on  the  sexual  conditions  of  life  ;  by  another  group, 
"  Calamus,"  on  the  love  of  comrades,  and  by  certain 
pieces,  of  which  "  Crossing  Brooklyn  Ferry  "  is  a  good 
specimen,  in  which  the  aspect  and  occupations  of  the 
people  at  large,  the  glory  of  the  American  race,  and 
of  the  dwellers  in  Mannahatta,  are  specifically  chanted 
by  this  bard  of  New  York.  Then  follow  the  "  Drum- 
Taps,"  so  full  of  lyrical  fervor  that  Whitman  may  be 
called  a  chief  singer  of  that  great  conflict  to  which 
the  burning  songs  of  other  poets  had  been  an  over- 
ture. There  also  are  "  Marches  Now  the  War  is 
Over,"  with  a  few  pieces  that  celebrate  the  republi- 
can uprisings  in  Europe,  and  the  first  volume  closes 
with  "  Songs  of  Parting."  The  second,  after  a  gen- 
eral preface,  opens  with  "  Two  Rivulets,"  parallel 
streams  of  prose  and  verse,  followed  by  a  prose  essay 
of  a  Carlylese  type,  possibly  suggested  by  Carlyle's 
strictures  on  America.     Much  of  all  this  portion,  prose 


AS  A    WRITER  OF  PROSE, 


363 


and  verse,  is  the  least  satisfactory  of  Whitman's  writ- 
ings, although  greatly  in  earnest  and  of  most  import 
to  the  author.  "The  Centennial  Songs"  (1876)  and 
the  poems  of  1872  (including  that  fine  burst,  "The 
Mystic  Trumpeter")  come  next.  Reverting  to  his 
prose  "Rivulet"  and  the  "Democratic  Vistas,"  I  do 
not  find,  —  in  these  contradictory  views  of  the  present, 
notices  of  weak  joints  in  our  armor,  and  dreams  of 
the  future,  —  much  that  has  not  been  considered  by 
many  who  have  helped  to  guide  our  republic  thus  far, 
much  that  has  not  occurred  to  the  poet's  fellow- 
thinkers,  or  is  not,  at  least,  within  their  power  to 
understand  and  amend.  Neither  are  they  expressed 
in  that  terse  and  sufficient  language  common  to  rare 
minds,  —  nor  in  a  way  at  all  comparable  to  the  writ- 
er's surer  way  of  expressing  himself  in  his  chosen 
verse.  Well-written  articles  like  his  recantation  of 
Emerson  lead  one  to  suspect  that  his  every-day  prose 
is  distorted  intentionally,  otherwise  I  should  say  that, 
if  he  is  a  poet  of  high  rank,  he  is  an  exception  to  the 
conceit  that  the  truest  poets  write  also  the  most  gen- 
uine and  noble  prose  ;  for  certainly  his  usual  style  is 
no  nearer  that  of  healthy,  self-sustained  English  than 
his  verse  is  to  ordinary  rhythm.  A  poet's  genius  may 
reconcile  us  to  that  which  Cosmo  Monkhouse  terms 
poetry  in  solution,  but  prose  in  dissolution  is  unde- 
sirable. A  continuous  passage  of  good  prose,  not 
broken  up  with  dashes  and  parentheses,  and  other 
elements  of  weakness,  nor  marred  by  incoherent  and 
spasmodic  expressions,  is  hard  to  find  in  his  "  Rivu- 
lets"  and  "Vistas."  Both  his  prose  and  verse  have 
one  fault  in  common,  that  he  underrates  the  intelli- 
gence of  readers.  This  is  visible  in  constant  repeti- 
tion of  his  thoughts,  often  in  forms  that  grow  weaker, 
and  in  his  intimation  that  we  are  even   unwilling   to 


"Demo- 
cratic Vis- 
tas," etc. 


Defects  of 
Whit- 
man's 
Prose. 


3<54 


WALT  WHITMAN. 


"Memo- 
randa 
during  the 
War." 


Poems  on 
Death. 


Lincoln's 

"Burial 

Hymn." 


comprehend    ideas   which  are  familiar  to  all   radical 
thinkers  in  modern  times. 

More  impressive  in  their  vivid  realism,  and  as  evi- 
dence not  to  be  gainsaid  of  Whitman's  personal  qual- 
ities, are  the  "  Memoranda  during  the  War,"  homely 
and  fragmentary  records  of  his  labors  among  the  sol- 
diers. Three  years  and  more  were  covered  by  these 
acts  of  devotion,  and  it  is  well  they  should  be  com- 
memorated. Their  records  constitute  a  picture  of  his 
life  at  its  highest  moment,  and  are  interludes  between 
his  poems  of  life  and  those  upon  death.  The  latter, 
under  the  title,  "  Passage  to  India,"  express  the  ma- 
turest  yearning  of  his  soul.  Chastened  by  illness  and 
wise  through  experience,  the  singer  whose  pulses  have 
beaten  with  life's  full  tide  now  muses  upon  Death,  — 
the  universal  blessing.  With  lofty  faith  and  imagining 
he  confronts  the  unknown.  To  one  so  watchful  of 
his  own  individuality,  any  creed  that  involves  a  merger 
of  it  is  monstrous  and  impossible.  He  bids  his  soul 
voyage  through  death's  portals,  sure  to  find 

"The  untold  want,  by  life  and  land  ne'er  granted." 
He  is  at  the  farthest  remove  from  our  modish 
Buddhism,  nor  can  any  Nirvana  satisfy  his  demands. 
In  this  section  his  song  is  on  a  high  key,  and  less 
reduced  than  elsewhere  by  untimely  commonplace. 
Here  are  the  pieces  inspired  by  the  tragic  death  of 
Lincoln.  The  burial  hymn,  "  When  Lilacs  last,"  etc., 
is  entitled  to  the  repute  in  which  it  is  affectionately 
held.  The  theme  is  handled  in  an  indirect,  melo- 
dious, pathetic  manner,  and  I  think  this  poem  and 
Lowell's  "  Commemoration  Ode,"  each  in  its  own 
way,  the  most  notable  elegies  resulting  from  the  war 
and  its  episodes.  Whitman's  is  exquisitely  idyllic, 
Lowell's  the  more  heroic  and  intellectual.  Even  the 
"  Genius  of  These  States  "  might  stoop  for  an  instant 


'NOBLE  NUMBERS. 


365 


to  hear  the  Cambridge  scholar,  and  I  can  yield  the 
"  Burial  Hymn  "  no  truer  homage  than  to  associate  it 
with  his  Ode. 

A  "  Poem  of  Joys  "  makes  an  artistic  contrast  with 
these  death-carols,  and  a  group  of  "  Sea-shore  Mem- 
ories," with  their  types  and  music  of  the  infinite,  add 
to  the  climacteric  effect  of  this  division.  Unable  here 
to  cite  passages  from  Whitman,  I  can  at  least  direct 
the  reader  how  to  get  at  his  real  capabilities.  For  his 
original  mood,  and  something  of  his  color,  imagina- 
tion, hold  upon  nature,  lyric  power,  turn  then  to  the 
broad  harmonies  of  the  "  Sea-shore  Memories " ;  to 
"  Lincoln's  Burial  Hymn,"  and  the  shorter  poems 
beyond  it;  to  "The  Mystic  Trumpeter,"  and  "The 
Wound-Dresser";  and  then,  after  reading  the  sixth 
section  of  the  poem,  "Walt  Whitman," 

"A  child  said,  'What  is  the  grass?'" 
find  the  two  hundred  and  sixth  paragraph, 

"I  understand  the  large  hearts  of  heroes," 

and  read  to  the  end  of  the  frigate-fight.  These  pas- 
sages are  a  fair  introduction  to  the  poet,  and  you  will 
go  with  him  farther,  until  checked  by  some  repulsive 
exhibition,  or  wearied  by  pages  cheap  in  wisdom  and 
invective  or  —  intolerably  dull.  Often  where  he  utters 
truths,  it  is  with  an  effort  to  give  offence,  or  with  ex- 
pressions of  contempt  for  their  recipient  that  well 
might  make  even  the  truth  offensive.  A  man  does  not 
care  to  be  driven  with  blows  and  hard  names,  even  to 
a  feast,  nor  to  have  the  host  brag  too  much  of  the 
entertainment. 


Sugges- 
tions to  the 
reader. 


366 


WALT  WHITMAN. 


Whit- 
man's 
fkysical 
and  sexual 
themes  and 
illustra- 
tions. 


III. 

Here  we  may  as  well  consider  a  trait  of  Whitman's 
early  work  that  most  of  all  has  brought  it  under  cen- 
sure. I  refer  to  the  blunt  and  open  manner  in  which 
the  consummate  processes  of  nature,  the  acts  of  pro- 
creation and  reproduction,  with  all  that  appertain  to 
them,  are  made  the  theme  or  illustration  of  various 
poems,  notably  of  those  with  the  title  "  Children  of 
Adam."  Landor  says  of  a  poet  that,  "  on  the  remark 
of  a  learned  man  that  irregularity  is  no  indication  of 
genius,  he  began  to  lose  ground  rapidly,  when  on  a 
sudden  he  cried  out  in  the  Haymarket,  '  There  is  no 
God.'  It  was  then  rumored  more  generally  and  more 
gravely  that  he  had  something  in  him.  .  .  .  '  Say  what 
you  will,'  once  whispered  a  friend  of  mine,  '  there  are 
things  in  him  strong  as  poison,  and  original  as  sin.'  " 
But  those  who  looked  upon  Whitman's  sexuality  as  a 
shrewd  advertisement  justly  might  be  advised  to  let 
him  reap  the  full  benefit  of  it,  since,  if  he  had  no 
more  sincere  basis,  it  would  receive  the  earlier  judg- 
ment —  and  ere  long  be  "  outlawed  of  art."  This  has 
not  been  its  fate,  and  therefore  it  must  have  had 
something  of  conviction  to  sustain  it.  Nevertheless, 
it  made  the  public  distrustful  of  this  poet,  and  did 
much  to  confine  his  volumes  to  the  libraries  of  the 
select  few.  Prurient  modesty  often  is  a  sign  that 
people  are  conscious  of  personal  defects;  but  Whit- 
man's physical  excursions  are  of  a  kind  which  even 
Thoreau,  refreshed  as  he  was  by  the  new  poet,  found 
it  hard  to  keep  pace  with.  The  fault  was  not  that 
he  discussed  matters  which  others  timidly  evade,  but 
that  he  did  not  do  it  in  a  clean  way,  —  that  he  was 
too  anatomical  and  malodorous  withal ;  furthermore, 
that  in  this  department  he  showed  a  morbid  interest, 


'  CHILDREN  OF  ADAM?   ETC. 


367 


and  applied  its  imagery  to  other  departments,  as  if 
with  a  special  purpose  to  lug  it  in.  His  pictures 
sometimes  were  so  realistic,  his  speech  so  free,  as  to 
excite  the  hue  and  cry  of  indecent  exposure  ;  the  dis- 
play of  things  natural,  indeed,  but  which  we  think  it 
unnatural  to  exhibit  on  the  highway,  or  in  the  read- 
ing-room and  parlor. 

On  the  poet's  side  it  is  urged  that  the  ground  of 
this  exposure  was,  that  thus  only  could  his  reform  be 
consistent ;  that  it  was  necessary  to  celebrate  the  body 
with  special  unction,  since,  with  respect  to  the  phys- 
ical basis  of  life,  our  social  weakness  and  hypocrisy 
are  most  extreme.  Not  only  should  the  generative 
functions  be  proclaimed,  but,  also,  —  to  show  that 
"  there  is  in  nature  nothing  mean  or  base,"  —  the  side 
of  our  life  which  is  hidden,  because  it  is  of  the  earth, 
earthy,  should  be  plainly  recognized  in  these  poems ; 
and  thus,  out  of  rankness  and  coarseness,  a  new  vi- 
rility be  bred,  an  impotent  and  squeamish  race  at  last 
be  made  whole. 

Entering  upon  this  field  of  dispute,  what  I  have  to 
say  —  in  declaring  that  Whitman  mistakes  the  aim  of 
the  radical  artist  or  poet  —  is  perhaps  different  from 
the  criticism  to  which  he  has  been  subjected.  Let  us 
test  him  solely  by  his  own  rules.  Doing  this,  we  pre- 
suppose his  honesty  of  purpose,  otherwise  his  objec- 
tionable phrases  and  imagery  would  be  outlawed,  not 
only  of  art  but  of  criticism.  Assume,  then,  first,  that 
they  were  composed  as  a  fearless  avowal  of  the  in- 
stincts and  conditions  which  pertain  to  him  in  common 
with  the  race  which  he  typifies ;  secondly,  that  he 
deems  such  a  presentation  essential  to  his  revolt 
against  the  artifice  of  current  life  and  sentiment,  and 
makes  it  in  loyal  reliance  upon  the  excellence,  the  truth, 
of  nature.      To  judge  him   in   conformity  with  these 


Alleged  in- 
decency. 


The  Poet's 
defence : 
iia  sane 
sensual- 
ity:' 


How  to  test 
this  mat- 
ter. 


368 


WALT  WHITMAN. 


Genius  is 
consistent. 


Wherein 
this  poet 
miscon- 
ceives the 
instinct 
and  meth- 
od of  Na- 
ture. 


"Affaire 
Climen- 
ceau." 
Paris. 


ideas  lessens  our  estimate  of  his  genius.  Genius  is 
greatly  consistent  when  most  audacious.  Its  instinct 
will  not  violate  nature's  logic,  even  by  chance,  and  it  is 
something  like  obtuseness  that  does  so  upon  a  theory. 
In  Mr.  Whitman's  sight,  that  alone  is  to  be  con- 
demned which  is  against  nature,  yet,  in  his  mode  of 
allegiance,  he  violates  her  canons.  For,  if  there  is 
nothing  in  her  which  is  mean  or  base,  there  is  much 
that  is  ugly  and  disagreeable.  If  not  so  in  itself  (and 
on  the  question  of  absolute  beauty  I  accept  his  own 
ruling,  "that  whatever  tastes  sweet  to  the  most  per- 
fect person,  that  is  finally  right  "),  if  not  ugly  in  itself, 
it  seems  so  to  the  conscious  spirit  of  our  intelligence. 
Even  Mother  Earth  takes  note  of  this,  and  resolves, 
or  disguises  and  beautifies,  what  is  repulsive  upon  her 
surface.  It  is  well  said  that  an  artist  shows  inferiority 
by  placing  either  the  true,  the  beautiful,  or  the  good, 
above  its  associates.  Nature  is  strong  and  rank,  but 
not  externally  so.  She,  too,  has  her  sweet  and  sacred 
sophistries,  and  the  delight  of  Art  is  to  heighten  her 
beguilement,  and,  far  from  making  her  ranker  than 
she  is,  to  portray  what  she  might  be  in  ideal  combi- 
nations. Nature,  I  say,  covers  her  slime,  her  muck, 
her  ruins,  with  garments  that  to  us  are  beautiful.  She 
conceals  the  skeleton,  the  frame-work,  the  intestinal 
thick  of  life,  and  makes  fair  the  outside  of  things. 
Her  servitors  swiftly  hide  or  transform  the  ferment- 
ing, the  excrementitious,  and  the  higher  animals  pos- 
sess her  instinct.  Whitman  fails  to  perceive  that  she 
respects  certain  decencies,  that  what  we  call  decency 
is  grounded  in  her  law.  An  artist  should  not  elect 
to  paint  the  part  of  her  to  which  Churchill  rashly 
avowed  that  Hogarth's  pencil  was  devoted.  There  is 
a  book  —  the  Affaire  Clemenceau  —  in  which  a  French- 
man's regard  for  the  lamp  of  beauty,  and   his   indif- 


HIS  MISCONCEPTION  OF  NATURE. 


369 


ference  to  that  of  goodness,  are  curiously  illustrated. 
But  Dumas  points  out,  in  the  rebuke  given  by  a  sculp- 
tor to  a  pupil  who  mistakenly  elevates  the  arm  of  his 
first  model,  a  beautiful  girl,  that  the  Underside  of 
things  should  be  avoided  in  art,  —  since  Nature,  not 
meaning  it  to  be  shown,  often  deprives  it  of  beauty. 
Finally,  Whitman  sins  against  his  mistress  in  ques- 
tioning the  instinct  we  derive  from  her,  one  which 
of  all  is  most  elevating  to  poetry,  and  which  is  the 
basis  of  sensations  that  lead  childhood  on,  that  fill 
youth  with  rapture,  impress  with  longing  all  human 
kind,  and  make  up,  impalpable  as  they  are,  half  the 
preciousness  of  life.  He  draws  away  the  final  veil. 
It  is  not  squeamishness  that  leaves  something  to  the 
imagination,  that  hints  at  guerdons  still  unknown. 
The  law  of  suggestion,  of  half-concealment,  deter- 
mines the  choicest  effects,  and  is  the  surest  road  to 
truth.  Grecian  as  Whitman  may  be,  the  Greeks  bet- 
ter understood  this  matter,  as  scores  of  illustrations, 
like  that  of  the  attitude  of  the  Hermaphroditus  in  the 
Louvre,  show.  A  poet  violates  Nature's  charm  of  feel- 
ing in  robbing  love,  and  even  intrigue,  of  their  eso- 
teric quality.  No  human  appetites  need  be  pruriently 
ignored,  but  coarsely  analyzed  they  fall  below  hu- 
manity. He  even  takes  away  the  sweetness  and  pleas- 
antness of  stolen  waters  and  secret  bread.  Furto 
euncta  magis  bella.  The  mock-modesty  and  effemi- 
nacy of  our  falser  tendencies  in  art  should  be  chas 
tised,  but  he  misses  the  true  corrective.  Delicacy  is 
not  impotence,  nor  rankness  the  sure  mark  of  virility 
The  model  workman  is  both  fine  and  strong.  Where 
Whitman  sees  nothing  but  the  law  of  procreation, 
poetry  dwells  upon  the  union  of  souls,  devotion  unto 
death,  joys  greater  for  their  privacy,  things  of  more 
worth  because  whispered  between  the  twilights.  It 
24 


The  law  of 
Reserve, 
in  Nature 
and  Art. 


The  an- 
tique feel- 
ing. 


Delicacy 
not  incon- 
sistent with 
strength. 


37o 


WALT  WHITMAN, 


Spiritual- 
ity essen- 
tial* 


An  infer- 
ence and  a 
suggestion. 


"Walt 
Whit- 
man's 
Poems." 
Selected 


is  absolutely  true  that  the  design  of  sexuality  is  the 
propagation  of  species.  But  the  delight  of  lovers  who 
now  inherit  the  earth  is  no  less  a  natural  right,  and 
those  children  often  are  the  finest  that  were  begot 
without  thought  of  offspring.  There  are  other  lights 
in  which  a  dear  one  may  be  regarded  than  as  the 
future  mother  of  men,  and  these  —  with  their  present 
hour  of  joy  —  are  unjustly  subordinated  in  the  "  Leaves 
of  Grass."  Marked  as  the  failure  of  this  pseudo-nat- 
uralism has  been  hitherto,  even  thus  will  it  continue, 
—  so  long  as  savages  have  instincts  of  modesty,  —  so 
long  as  we  dream  of  and  draw  the  forms  and  faces, 
not  the  internal  substance  and  mechanism,  of  those  we 
hold  most  dear,  —  so  long  as  the  ivy  trails  over  the 
ruin,  the  southern  jessamine  covers  the  blasted  pine, 
the  moss  hides  the  festering  swamp,  —  so  long  as  our 
spirits  seek  the  spirit  of  all  things;  and  thus  long 
shall  art  and  poesy,  while  calling  every  truth  of  science 
to  their  aid,  rely  on  something  else  than  the  processes 
of  science  for  the  attainment  of  their  exquisite  results. 
From  the  tenor  of  Mr.  Whitman's  later  works,  I 
sometimes  have  thought  him  half-inclined  to  see  in 
what  respect  his  effort  toward  a  perfect  naturalism  was 
misdirected.  In  any  case,  there  would  be  no  inconsis- 
tency in  a  further  modification  of  his  early  pieces, — 
in  the  rejection  of  certain  passages  and  words,  which, 
by  the  law  of  strangeness,  are  more  conspicuous  than 
ten  times  their  amount  of  common  phraseology,  and 
grow  upon  the  reader  until  they  seem  to  pervade  the 
whole  volume.  The  examples  of  Lucretius,  Rabelais, 
and  other  masters,  who  wrote  in  other  ages  and  con- 
ditions, and  for  their  own  purposes,  have  little  anal- 
ogy. It  well  may  be  that  our  poet  at  first  had  more 
claim  to  a  wide  reading  in  England  than  here,  since 
his   English   editor,  without  asking  consent,   omitted 


METHOD   OF  HIS    VERSE. 


371 


entirely  every  poem  "  which  could  with  tolerable  fair- 
ness be  deemed  offensive."  Without  going  so  far,  and 
with  no  falseness  to  himself,  Whitman  might  re-edit 
his  editions  in  such  wise  that  they  would  not  be 
counted  wholly  among  those  books  which  are  meat 
for  strong  men,  but  would  have  a  chance  among  those 
greater  books  that  are  the  treasures  of  the  simple  and 
the  learned,  the  young  and  the  old. 

IV. 

The  entire  body  of  his  work  has  a  sign-metrical  by 
which  it  is  recognized  —  a  peculiar  and  uncompro- 
mising style,  conveyed  in  a  still  more  peculiar  un- 
rhymed  verse,  irregular,  yet  capable  of  impressive 
rhythmical  and  lyrical  effects. 

The  faults  of  his  method,  glaring  enough  in  ruder 
passages,  are  quite  his  own ;  its  merits  often  are 
no  less  so,  but  in  his  chosen  form  there  is  little  orig- 
inal and  new.  It  is  an  old  fashion,  always  selected 
for  dithyrambic  oracular  outpourings,  —  that  of  the 
Hebrew  lyrists  and  prophets,  and  their  inspired  Eng- 
lish translators,  —  of  the  Gaelic  minstrels,  —  of  various 
Oriental  and  Shemitic  peoples,  —  of  many  barbarous 
dark-skinned  tribes,  —  and  in  recent  times  put  to  use 
by  Blake,  in  the  "  Prophetic  Visions,"  and  by  other 
and  weaker  men.  There  are  symptoms  in  Whitman's 
earlier  poems,  and  definite  proof  in  the  later,  that  his 
studies  have  included  Blake,  —  between  whose  traits 
and  his  own  there  is  a  superficial,  not  a  genuine,  like- 
ness. Not  as  an  invention,  then,  but  as  a  striking  and 
persistent  renaissance,  the  form  that  has  become  his 
trade-mark,  and  his  extreme  claims  for  it,  should  have 
fair  consideration.  An  honest  effort  to  enlarge  the 
poet's  equipment,  too  long  unaided,  by  something  rich 


and  edited 
by  W.   Ta. 
Rossett* 
Londcr*. 


This  poet's 
lyricaland 
rhythmical 
method. 


Not  a  new 
invention. 


William 
Blake. 


It  de- 
mands a 
fair  exam* 
inaiion. 


372 


WALT   WHITMAN. 


"What  is 
Art?" 
S.  G.  W. 
Benjamin. 
Boston  : 
1877. 


Outcry 
against 
wonted 
forms. 


The  ques- 
tion of 
Technique. 


and  strange,  deserves  praise,  even  though  a  failure ; 
for  there  are  failures  worthier  than  triumphs.  Our 
chanter  can  bear  with  dignity  the  provincial  laughter 
of  those  to  whom  all  is  distasteful  that  is  uncommon, 
and  regard  it  as  no  unfavorable  omen.  From  us  the 
very  strangeness  of  his  chant  shall  gain  for  it  a  wel- 
come, and  the  chance  to  benefit  us  as  it  may.  Thereby 
we  may  escape  the  error  pointed  out  by  Mr.  Benja- 
min, who  says  that  people,  in  approaching  a  work,  in- 
stead of  learning  from  it,  try  to  estimate  it  from  their 
preconceived  notions.  Hence,  original  artists  at  first 
endure  neglect,  because  they  express  their  own  dis- 
coveries in  nature  of  what  others  have  not  yet  seen, 
—  a  truth  well  to  bear  in  mind  whenever  a  singer  ar- 
rives with  a  new  method. 

Probably  the  method  under  review  has  had  a  can- 
!did  hearing  in  more  quarters  than  the  author  himself 
is  aware  of.  If  some  men  of  independent  thought  and 
feeling  have  failed  to  accept  his  claims  and  his  esti- 
mate of  the  claims  of  others,  it  possibly  has  not  been 
through  exclusiveness  or  malice,  but  upon  their  own 
impression  of  what  has  value  in  song. 

Whitman  never  has  swerved  from  his  primal  indict- 
ment of  the  wonted  forms,  rhymed  and  unrhymed, 
dependent  upon  accentual,  balanced,  and  stanzaic 
effects  of  sound  and  shape,  —  and  until  recently  has 
expressed  his  disdain  not  only  of  our  poets  who  care 
for  them,  but  of  form  itself.  So  far  as  this  cry  was 
raised  against  the  technique  of  poetry,  I  think  not 
merely  that  it  is  absurd,  but  that  when  he  first  made 
it  he  had  not  clearly  thought  out  his  own  problem. 
Technique,  of  some  kind,  is  an  essential,  though  it  is 
equally  true  that  it  cannot  atone  for  poverty  of  thought 
and  imagination.  I  hope  to  show  that  he  never  was 
more  mistaken  than  when  he  supposed  he  was  throw- 


POETIC  FORMS. 


373 


ing  off  form  and  technique.  But  first  it  may  be  said 
that  no  "  form "  ever  has  sprung  to  life,  and  been 
handed  from  poet  to  poet,  that  was  not  engendered  by 
instinct  and  natural  law,  and  that  will  not  be  accepted 
in  a  sound  generalization.  Whitman  avers  that  the 
time  has  come  to  break  down  the  barriers  between 
prose  and  verse,  and  that  only  thus  can  the  Amer- 
ican bard  utter  anything  commensurate  with  the  lib- 
erty and  splendor  of  his  themes.  Now,  the  mark  of 
a  poet  is  that  he  is  at  ease  everywhere,  —  that  noth- 
ing can  hamper  his  gifts,  his  exultant  freedom.  He 
is  a  master  of   expression.     There   are  certain  points 

—  note  this  —  where  expression  takes  on  rhythm,  and 
certain  other  points  where  it  ceases  to  be  rhythmical, 

—  places  where  prose  becomes  poetical,  and  where 
verse  grows  prosaic;  and  throughout  Whitman's  pro- 
ductions these  points  are  more  frequent  and  unmis- 
takable than  in  the  work  of  any  other  writer  of  our 
time.  However  bald  or  formal  a  poet's  own  method, 
it  is  useless  for  him  to  decry  forms  that  recognize 
the  pulses  of  time  and  accent,  and  the  linked  sweet- 
ness of  harmonic  sound.  Some  may  be  tinkling,  oth- 
ers majestic,  but  each  is  suited  to  its  purpose,  and 
has  a  spell  to  charm  alike  the  philosopher  and  the 
child  that  knows  not  why.  The  human  sense  ac- 
knowledges them;  they  are  the  earliest  utterance  of 
divers  peoples,  and  in  their  later  excellence  still  hold 
their  sway.  Goethe  discussed  all  this  with  Ecker- 
mann,  and  rightly  said  there  were  "great  and  myste- 
rious agencies "  in  the  various  poetic  forms.  He 
even  added  that  if  a  sort  of  poetic  prose  should  be 
introduced,  it  would  only  show  that  the  distinction 
between  prose  and  poetry  had  been  lost  sight  of  com- 
pletely. Rhyme,  the  most  conventional  feature  of 
ballad  verse,  has  its  due  place,  and  will   keep  it;  it 


Unbound- 
ed liberty 
of  the  Poet. 


Time, 
A  ccent, 
Rhythm. 


Goethe's 
view. 


Rhyme. 


374 


WALT  WHITMAN. 


Whitman 
upon  Eng- 
lish blank 
verse. 


Glory  of 
this  su- 
preme 
measure. 
Cp."  Vic- 
torian 
Poets": 
fp.  160- 

*2. 


is  an  artifice,  but  a  natural  artifice,  and  pleases  ac- 
cordingly. Milton  gave  reasons  for  discarding  it  when 
he  perfected  an  unrhymed  measure  for  the  stateliest 
English  poem ;  but  what  an  instrument  rhyme  was  in 
his  hands  that  made  the  sonnets  and  minor  poems! 
How  it  has  sustained  the  whole  carnival  of  our  heroic 
and  lyric  song,  from  the  sweet  pipings  of  Lodge  and 
Chapman  and  Shakespeare,  to  the  undertones  of 
Swinburne  and  Poe !  There  are  endless  combinations 
yet  in  the  gamut.  The  report  is  that  Whitman's  prej- 
udice is  specially  strong  against  our  noblest  unrhymed 
form,  "  blank-verse."  Its  variety  and  freedom,  within 
a  range  of  accents,  breaks,  caesural  effects,  —  its  roll- 
ing organ-harmonies,  —  he  appreciates  not  at  all. 
Rhythmical  as  his  own  verse  often  can  be,  our  future 
poets  scarcely  will  discard  blank-verse  in  its  behalf 
—  not  if  they  shall  recall  "The  Tempest,"  "Hail, 
Holy  Light,"  "Tintern  Abbey,"  "Hyperion,"  the  "  Hel- 
lenics," "Ulysses,"  and  " Thanatopsis."  Mr.  Parke 
Godwin,  in  a  private  letter,  terms  it  "the  grandest 
and  most  flexible  of  English  measures,"  and  adds, 
with  quick  enthusiasm:  "Oh,  what  a  glory  there  is 
in  it,  when  we  think  of  what  Shakespeare,  Milton, 
Wordsworth,  and  Landor  made  of  it,  to  say  nothing 
of  Ttennyson  and  Bryant ! "  I  doubt  not  that  new 
handlings  of  this  measure  will  produce  new  results, 
unsurpassed  in  any  tongue.  It  is  quite  as  fit  as  Mr. 
Whitman's  own,  if  he  knows  the  use  of  it,  for  "the 
expression  of  American  democracy  and  manhood," 
Seeing  how  dull  and  prolix  he  often  becomes,  it  may 
be  that  even  for  him  his  measure  has  been  too  facile, 
and  that  the  curb  of  a  more  regular  unrhymed  form 
would  have  spared  us  many  tedious  curvetings  and 
grewsome  downfalls. 

Strenuous  as  he  may  be  in  his  belief  that  the  old 


HIS   THEORY  AND  ITS   ORIGIN. 


375 


methods  will  be  useless  to  poets  of  the  future,  I  am 
sure  that  he  has  learned  the  value  of  technique  through 
his  long  practice.     He  well  knows  that  whatever  claims 
to  be   the   poetry  of   the   future  speedily  will   be  for- 
gotten in  the  past,  unless  consonant  with  the  laws  of 
expression  in  the  language  to  which  it  belongs;  that 
verse  composed  upon  a  theory,  if   too  artificial  in  its 
contempt   of   art,  may  be   taken   up  for  a  while,  but, 
as   a  false   fashion,  anon  will   pass    away.     Not   that 
his  verse  is  of   this  class;  but  it  justly  has  been  de- 
clared that,  in  writing  with  a  purpose  to  introduce  a 
new  mode  or  revolutionize   thought,  and  not  because 
an  irresistible  impulse  seizes  him,  a  poet  is  so  much 
the  less  a  poet.     Our  question,  then,  involves  the  spon- 
taneity of  his  work,  and  the  results  attained  by  him. 
His  present  theory,  like   most  theories  which  have 
reason,  seems  to  be  derived  from  experience :  he  has 
learned   to   discern   the   good   and   bad   in   his  work, 
and  has  arrived  at  a  rationale  of   it.     He  sees  that 
he  has  been  feeling  after  the  irregular,  various  har- 
monies of  nature,  the  anthem  of  the  winds,  the  roll 
of  the   surges,    the   countless   laughter   of   the   ocean 
waves.     He   tries   to   Catch   this    "  under-melody   and 
rhythm."     Here   is   an   artistic   motive,  distinguishing 
his  chainless  dithyrambs  from  ordinary  verse,  somewhat 
as  the  new  German  music  is  distinguished  from  folk- 
melody,  and  from  the  products  of   a  preceding,  espe- 
cially the   Italian,  school.     Here   is  not   only  reason, 
but  a  theoretical  advance  to  a  grade  of  art  demand- 
ing extreme  resources,  because   it   affords  the  widest 
range  of  combination  and  effect. 

But  this  comprehension  of  his  own  aim  is  an  after- 
thought, the  result  of  long  groping.  The  genesis  of 
the  early  "Leaves"  was  in  motives  less  artistic  and 
penetrating.      Finding   that   he   could   not   think   and 


Whit- 
man's rear 
sonable 
statement 
of  his  own 
endeavor. 


Its  true 
origin. 


376 


WALT  WHITMAN. 


Quality 
of  his  eye 
and  ear. 


The 
results 

attained. 


work  to  advantage  in  the  current  mode,  he  concluded 
that  the  mode  itself  was  at  fault;  especially,  that  the 
poet  of  a  young,  gigantic  nation,  the  prophet  of  a 
new  era,  should  have  a  new  vehicle  of  song.  With- 
out looking  farther,  he  spewed  out  the  old  forms,  and 
avowed  his  distaste  for  poets  who  still  employ  them. 
His  off-hand  course  does  not  bring  us  to  the  conclu- 
sion of  the  whole  matter.  So  far  as  the  crudeness  of 
the  juventus  tnundi  is  revived  by  him,  it  must  be  tem- 
poral and  passing,  like  the  work  of  some  painters, 
who,  for  the  sake  of  startling  effects,  use  ephemeral 
pigments.  A  poet  does  not,  perforce,  restore  the  lost 
foundations  of  his  art  by  copying  the  manner  natural 
to  an  aboriginal  time  and  people.  He  is  merely  ex- 
changing masters,  and  certainly  is  not  founding  a  new 
school.  Only  as  he  discovers  the  inherent  tendencies 
of  song  does  he  belong  to  the  future.  Still,  it  is 
plain  that  Whitman  found  a  style  suited  to  his  pur- 
poses, and  was  fortunate  both  as  a  poet  and  a  diplo- 
matist. He  was  sure  to  attract  notice,  and  to  seem 
original,  by  so  pronounced  a  method.  Quoth  the 
monk  to  Gargantua,  "A  mass,  a  matin,  or  vesper, 
well  rung,  is  half  said."  It  was  suited  to  him  as  a 
poet,  because  he  has  that  somewhat  wandering  sense 
of  form,  and  of  melody,  which  often  makes  one's  con- 
ceptions seem  the  more  glorious  to  himself,  as  if  in- 
vested with  a  halo  or  blended  with  concurrent  sound, 
and  prevents  him  from  lessening  or  enlarging  them 
by  the  decisive  master-hand,  or  at  once  perfecting 
them  by  sure  control. 

A  man  who  finds  that  his  gloves  cripple  him  does 
right  in  drawing  them  off.  At  first,  Whitman  cer- 
tainly meant  to  escape  all  technique.  But  genius,  in 
spite  of  itself,  makes  works  that  stand  the  test  of  sci- 
entific laws.     And  thus  he  now  sees  that  he  was  grop- 


ADAPTABILITY  OF  GENIUS. 


377 


ing  toward   a  broader   technique.     Unrhymed   verse, 
the  easiest  to  write,  is  the  hardest  to  excel  in.  and  no 
measure   for  a  bardling.     And  Whitman  never  more 
nearly  displayed  the  feeling  of  a  true  artist  than  when 
he  expressed  a  doubt  as  to  his  present  handling  of 
his  own  verse,  but  hoped  that,  in  breaking  loose  from 
transmarine  forms,  he  had  sounded,  at  least,  the  key 
for  a  new  psean.     I  have  referred  to  his  gradual  ad- 
vances in  the  finish  of  his  song.     Whether  he  has  re- 
vived a  form  which  others  will  carry  to  a  still  higher 
excellence   is   doubtful.     Blank-verse,   limitless   in  its 
capacities,   forces   a  poet  to   stand   without  disguise, 
and   reveals   all   his   defects.     Whitman's  verse,  it   is 
true,  does  not  subject  him  to  so  severe  a  test.     He 
can  so  twist   and   turn   himself,  and   run   and   jump, 
that  we  are  puzzled  to  inspect  him  at  all,  or  make 
out  his  contour.    Yet  the  few  who  have  ventured  to 
follow  him  have  produced  little  that  has  not  seemed 
like   parody,  or  unpleasantly   grotesque.     It   may   be 
that  his  mode  is  suited  to  himself  alone,  and  not  to 
the  future  poets  of  These  States,— that  the  next  orig- 
inal genius  will  have  to  sing  "  as  Martin  Luther  sang," 
and  the  glorious  army  of  poetic  worthies.     I  suspect 
that  the  old  forms,  in  endless  combinations,  will  re- 
turn as  long  as  new  poets  arise  with  the  old  abiding 
sense  of  time  and  sound. 

The  greatest  poet  is  many-sided,  and  will  hold  him- 
self slavishly  to  no  one  thing  for  the  sake  of  differ- 
ence. He  is  a  poet,  too,  in  spite  of  measure  and 
material,  while,  as  to  manner,  the  style  is  the  man. 
Genius  does  not  need  a  special  language;  it  newly 
uses  whatever  tongue  it  finds.  Thought,  fire,  passion, 
will  overtop  everything,  — -  will  show,  like  the  limbs  of 
Teverino,  through  the  clothes  of  a  prince  or  a  beggar. 
A  cheap  and   common   instrument,  odious   in   foolish 


Adapta- 
bility of 
true 
genius. 


378 


WALT  WHITMAN. 


The  style 
is  the  man. 


A  signifi- 
cant/act. 


Copious 
and 

original 
diction. 


Effective 
titles  and 
tpithets. 


hands,  becomes  the  slave  of  music  under  the  touch 
of  a  master.  I  attach  less  importance,  therefore,  to 
Whitman's  experiment  in  verse  than  he  and  his  crit- 
ics have,  and  inquire  of  his  mannerism  simply  how 
far  it  represents  the  man.  To  show  how  little  there 
is  in  itself,  we  only  have  to  think  of  Tupper;  to  see 
how  rich  it  may  be,  when  the  utterance  of  genius, 
listen  to  Whitman's  teacher,  William  Blake.  It  does 
not  prove  much,  but  still  is  interesting,  to  note  that 
the  pieces  whose  quality  never  fails  with  any  class 
of  hearers,  — of  which  "My  Captain"  is  an  example, 
—  are  those  in  which  our  poet  has  approached  most 
nearly,  and  in  a  lyrical,  melodious  manner,  to  the  or- 
dinary forms. 

He   is   far  more  original  in  his  style  proper   than 
in  his  metrical  inventions.      His  diction,  on  its  good 
behavior,  is  copious  and  strong,  full  of  surprises,  util- 
izing the  brave,  homely  words  of  the  people,  and  as- 
signing new  duties  to  common  verbs  and  nouns.     He 
has  a  use  of  his  own  for  Spanish  and   French  catch- 
words, picked  up,  it  may  be,  on  his  trip  to  Louisiana 
or  in    Mexican  war   times.     Among  all  this  is  much 
slang  that  now  has  lived  its  life,  and  is  not  understood 
by  a  new  generation  with  a  slang  of  its  own.     This 
does  not  offend  so  much  as  the    mouthing  verbiage, 
the  "  ostent  evanescent "    phrases,  wherein  he   seems 
profoundest  to  himself,  and  really  is  at  his  worst.     The 
titles  of  his  books  and  poems  are  varied  and  sonorous. 
Those  of  the  latter  often  are  taken  from  the  opening 
lines,  and  are  key-notes.    What  can  be  fresher   than 
"Leaves  of    Grass"  and  "Calamus"?     What   richer 
than  "  The  Mystic  Trumpeter,"  "  O  Star  of  France  !  " 
"  Proud  Music  of  the  Storm  "  ;  or  simpler  than  "  Drum- 
Taps,"    "The   Wound-Dresser,"    "The    Ox-Tamer"; 
or  more  characteristic   than  "  Give  me  the  Splendid 


AS  A   POET  OF  NATURE. 


379 


Silent  Sun,"  "  Mannahatta,"  "  As  a  Strong  Bird  on 
Pinions  Free,"  "Joy,  Shipmate,  Joy"?  Some  are 
obscure  and  grandiose  —  "  Eidolons,"  "  Chanting  the 
Square  Deific,"  but  usually  his  titles  arrest  the  eye 
and  haunt  the  ear;  it  is  an  artist  that  invents  them, 
and  the  best  pieces  have  the  finest  names.  His  ep- 
ithets, also,  are  racier  than  those  of  other  poets; 
there  is  something  of  the  Greek  in  Whitman,  and  his 
lovers  call  him  Homeric,  but  to  me  he  shall  be  our  old 
American   Hesiod,  teaching  us  works  and  days. 


His  surest  hold,  then,  is  as  an  American  poet, 
gifted  with  language,  feeling,  imagination,  and  inspired 
by  a  determined  purpose.  Some  estimate,  as  I  have 
said,  may  be  made  of  his  excellence  and  short-com- 
ings, without  waiting  for  that  national  absorption 
which  he  himself  declares  to  be  the  test. 

As  an  assimilating  poet  of  nature  he  has  positive 
genius,  and  seems  to  me  to  present  his  strongest 
claims.  Who  else,  in  fact,  has  so  true  a  hand  or  eye 
for  the  details,  the  sweep  and  color,  of  American 
landscape?  Like  others,  he  confronts  those  superb 
physical  aspects  of  the  New  World  which  have  con- 
trolled our  poetry  and  painting,  and  deferred  the 
growth  of  a  figure-school,  but  in  this  struggle  with 
Nature  he  is  not  overcome;  if  not  the  master,  he  is 
the  joyous  brother-in-arms.  He  has  heard  the  mes- 
sage of  the  pushing,  wind-swept  sea,  along  Paumanok's 
shore  ;  he  knows  the  yellow,  waning  moon  and  the 
rising  stars,  —  the  sunset,  with  its  cloud-bar  of  gold 
above  the  horizon,  —  the  birds  that  sing  by  night  or 
day,  bush  and  brier,  and  every  shining  or  swooning 
flower,  the  peaks,  the  prairie,  the  mighty,  conscious 


General 

estimate 
of  his  mer- 
its and  de- 
fects. 


A  verita- 
ble poet  of 
nature. 


38o 


WALT  WHITMAN. 


The 

human 

element 

often 

present. 


His  imag- 
ination. 


river,  the  dear  common  grass  that  children  fetch  with 
full  hands.  Little  escapes  him,  not  even  "  the  mossy- 
scabs  of  the  worm  fence,  and  heap'd  stones,  mullein 
and  poke-weed  "  ;  but  his  details  are  massed,  blended, 
—  the  wind  saturates  and  the  light  of  the  American 
skies  transfigures  them.  Not  that  to  me,  recalling  the 
penetrative  glance  of  Emerson,  the  wood  and  way-side 
craft  that  Lowell  carried  lightly  as  a  sprig  of  fir,  and 
recalling  other  things  of  others,  does  Whitman  seem 
our  "  only  "  poet  of  nature ;  but  that  here  he  is  on  his 
own  ground,  and  with  no  man  his  leader. 

Furthermore,  his  intimacy  with  Nature  is  always 
subjective,  —  she  furnishes  the  background  for  his 
self-portraiture  and  his  images  of  men.  None  so  apt 
as  he  to  observe  the  panorama  of  life,  to  see  the 
human  figure,  —  the  hay-maker,  wagoner,  boatman, 
soldier,  woman  and  babe  and  maiden,  and  brown,  lusty 
boy,  —  to  hear  not  only  "the  bravuras  of  birds,  bustle 
of  growing  wheat,  gossip  of  flames,  clack  of  sticks 
cooking  my  meals,"  but  also  "the  sound  I  love,  the 
sound  of  the  human  voice."  His  town  and  country 
scenes,  in  peace  or  in  war,  are  idyllic.  From  utter 
want  of  sympathy,  he  can  only  name  and  designate 
anything  above  the  genre — he  does  not  depict  it.  A 
single  sketch,  done  in  some  original  way,  often  makes 
a  poem ;  such  is  that  reminiscence  (in  rhyme)  of  the 
old  Southern  negress,  "  Ethiopia  Saluting  the  Colors," 
and  such  the  touching  conceit  of  Old  Ireland  —  no 
fair  and  green-robed  Hibernia  of  the  harp,  but  an 
ancient,  sorrowful  mother,  white-haired,  lean  and  tat- 
tered, seated  on  the  ground,  mourning  for  her  children. 
He  tells  her  that  they  are  not  dead,  but  risen  again, 
with  rosy  and  new  blood,  in  another  country.  This  is 
admirable,  I  say,  and  the  true  way  to  escape  tra- 
dition ;  this  is   imaginative,  —  and   there   is  imagina« 


IMAGINATION. 


381 


tion,  too,  in  his  apostrophe  to  "  The  Man-of-War- 
Bird  "  (carried  beyond  discretion  by  this  highest  mood, 
he  finds  it  hard  to  avoid  blank-verse)  :  — 

"  Thou  who  hast  slept  all  night  upon  the  storm, 
Waking  renewed  on  thy  prodigious  pinions ! 

Thou,  born  to  match  the  gale  (thou  art  all  wings)  ! 

To  cope  with  heaven  and  earth  and  sea  and  hurricane; 

Thou  ship  of  air  that  never  furl'st  thy  sails, 

Days,    even    weeks,    untired   and    onward,    through   spaces  — 

realms  gyrating. 
At  dark  that  look'st  on  Senegal,  at  morn,  America ; 
That  sport'st  amid  the  lightning-flash  and  thunder-cloud! 
In  these — in  thy  experiences  —  hadst  thou  my  soul, 
What  joys  !     What  joys  were  thine  !  " 

Imagination  is  the  essential  thing ;  without  it  poetry 
is  as  sounding  brass  or  a  tinkling  cymbal.  Whitman 
shows  it  in  his  sudden  and  novel  imagery,  and  in  the 
subjective  rapture  of  verse  like  this,  but  quite  as  often 
his  vision  is  crowded  and  inconsistent.  An  editor 
writes  to  me  :  "  In  so  far  as  imagination  is  thinking 
through  types  (eidullia),  Whitman  has  no  equal,"  add- 
ing that  he  does  not  use  the  term  as  if  applied  to 
Coleridge,  but  as  limited  to  the  use  of  types,  and  that 
"  in  this  sense  it  is  really  more  applicable  to  a  master 
of  science  than  to  a  poet.  In  the  poet  the  type  is 
lodged  in  his  own  heart,  and  when  the  occasion  comes 
.  .  .  he  is  mastered  by  it,  and  he  must  sing.  In 
Whitman  the  type  is  not  so  much  in  his  heart  as  in 
his  thought.  .  .  .  While  he  is  moved  by  thought,  often 
grand  and  elementary,  he  does  not  give  the  intellec- 
tual satisfaction  warranted  by  the  thought,  but  a  mov- 
ing panorama  of  objects.  He  not  only  puts  aside 
his  '  singing-robes,'  but  his  '  thinking-cap,'  and  resorts 
to  the  stereopticon."  How  acute,  how  true !  There 
is,  however,  a  peculiar  quality  in  these  long  catalogues 


H.  M.  Al- 
den's  anal~ 
ysis  of  this 
quality. 


"Cata- 
logues "  in 


382 


WALT   WHITMAN. 


Whit- 
mart's 
verse. 

Their 
meaning. 


Pathos 
and  ten- 
derness. 


Relations 
of  Poetry 
md  Sci- 
ence.    Cj. 


of  types,  —  such  as  those  in  the  "  Song  of  the  Broad- 
Axe  "  and  "  Salut  au  Monde,"  or,  more  poetically 
treated,  in  "  Longings  for  Home."  The  poet  appeals 
to  our  synthetic  vision.  Look  through  a  window ; 
you  see  not  only  the  framed  landscape,  but  each  tree 
and  stone  and  living  thing.  His  page  must  be  seized 
with  the  eye,  as  a  journalist  reads  a  column  at  a 
glance,  until  successive  "  types "  and  pages  blend  in 
the  mind  like  the  diverse  colors  of  a  swift-turning 
wheel.  Whitman's  most  inartistic  fault  is  that  he 
overdoes  this  method,  as  if  usually  unable  to  com- 
pose in  any  other  way. 

The  tenderness  of  a  strong  and  robust  nature  is  a 
winning  feature  of  his  song.  There  is  no  love-mak- 
ing, no  yearning  for  some  idol  of  the  heart.  In  the 
lack  of  so  refining  a  contrast  to  his  realism,  we  have 
gentle  thoughts  of  children,  images  of  grand  old  men, 
and  of  women  clothed  with  sanctity  and  years.  This 
tenderness,  a  kind  of  natural  piety,  marks  also  his 
poems  relating  to  the  oppressed,  the  suffering,  the 
wounded  and  dying  soldiers.  It  is  the  soul  of  the 
pathetic,  melodious  threne  for  Lincoln,  and  of  the  epi- 
logue—"My  Captain!"  These  pieces  remind  us 
that  he  has  gained  command  of  his  own  music,  and 
in  the  matter  of  tone  has  displayed  strength  from  the 
first.  In  revising  his  early  poems  he  has  improved 
their  effect  as  a  whole.  It  must  be  owned  that  his 
wheat  often  is  more  welcome  for  the  chaff  in  which  it 
is  scattered ;  there  is  none  of  the  persistent  luxury 
which  compels  much  of  Swinburne's  unstinted  wealth 
to  go  unreckoned.  Finally,  let  us  note  that  Whitman, 
long  ago,  was  not  unread  in  the  few  great  books  of 
the  world,  nor  inapt  to  digest  their  wisdom.  He  was 
among  the  first  to  perceive  the  grandeur  of  the  scien- 
tific truths  which  are  to  give  impulse  to  a  new  and 


DEMOCRACY  IN  AMERICA. 


383 


loftier  poetic  imagination.  Those  are  significant  pas- 
sages in  the  poem  "Walt  Whitman,"  written  by  one 
who  had  read  the  thirty-eighth  chapter  of  Job,  and  be- 
ginning, "Long  I  was  hugg'd  close  —  long  and  long." 
The  "  Leaves  of  Grass,"  in  thought  and  method, 
avowedly  are  a  protest  against  a  hackney  breed  of 
singers,  singing  the  same  old  song.  More  poets  than 
one  are  born  in  each  generation,  yet  Whitman  has 
derided  his  compeers  and  scouted  the  sincerity  of 
their  passion.  In  two  things  he  fairly  did  take  the 
initiative,  and  might,  like  a  wise  advocate,  rest  his 
case  upon  them.  He  essayed,  without  reserve  or 
sophistry,  the  full  presentment  of  the  natural  man. 
He  devoted  his  song  to  the  future  of  his  own  country, 
accepting  and  outvying  the  loudest  peak-and-prairie 
brag,  and  pledging  These  States  to  work  out  a  per- 
fect democracy  and  the  salvation  of  the  world.  Strik- 
ing words  and  venturesome  deeds,  for  which  he  must 
have  full  credit.  But  in  our  studies  of  the  ideal  and 
its  votaries,  the  failings  of  the  latter  cannot  be  lightly 
passed  over.  There  is  an  inconsistency,  despite  the 
gloss,  between  his  fearful  arraignment,  going  beyond 
Carlyle's,  of  the  outgrowth  of  our  democracy,  thus 
far,  and  his  promise  for  the  future.  In  his  prose,  he 
sees  neither  physical  nor  moral  health  among  us  :  all 
is  disease,  impotency,  fraud,  decline.  In  his  verse, 
the  average  American  is  lauded  as  no  type  ever  was 
before.  These  matters  renew  questions  which,  to  say 
the  least,  are  still  open.  Are  the  lines  of  caste  less 
sharply  divided  every  year,  or  are  the  high  growing 
higher,  and  the  low  lower,  under  our  democracy  ? 
Is  not  the  social  law  of  more  import  than  the  form  of 
government,  and  has  not  the  quality  of  race  much  to 
do  with  both?  Does  Americanism  in  speech  and  lit- 
erature depend  upon  the  form  and  letter,  or  upon  the 


"Victo- 
rian 
Poets": 
pp.  7-21, 
170,  i93» 
343- 

Protest 
against 
conven- 
tionalism. 


Realism, 
and  De- 
mocracy : 
the  cardi- 
nal princi- 
ples 0/ 
Whit- 


song. 


His  incom- 
plete judg- 
ment of 
Democ- 
racy in 
America. 


See  pp. 
4-1  x. 


3^4 


WALT  WHITMAN. 


Narrow- 
ness his 
main  de- 
fect. 


Classfeel- 
vtg. 


spirit?  Can  the  spirit  of  literature  do  much  more 
than  express  the  national  spirit  as  far  as  it  has  gone, 
and  has  it  not,  in  fact,  varied  with  the  atmosphere? 
Is  a  nation  changed  by  literature,  or  the  latter  by  the 
former,  in  times  when  journalism  so  swiftly  represents 
the  thought  and  fashion  of  each  day  ?  As  to  distinc- 
tions in  form  and  spirit  between  the  Old- World  litera- 
ture and  our  own,  I  have  always  looked  for  these  to 
enlarge  with  time.  But  with  the  recent  increase  of 
travel  and  communication,  each  side  of  the  Atlantic 
now  more  than  ever  seems  to  affect  the  other.  Our 
"native  flavor"  still  is  distinct  in  proportion  to  the 
youth  of  a  section,  and  inversely  to  the  development. 
It  is  an  intellectual  narrowness  that  fails  to  meditate 
upon  these  things. 

Thus  we  come  to  a  defect  in  Whitman's  theories, 
reasoning,  and  general  attitude.  He  professes  univer- 
sality, absolute  sympathy,  breadth  in  morals,  thought, 
workmanship,  —  exemption  from  prejudice  and  for- 
malism. Under  all  the  high  poetic  excellences  which 
I  carefully  have  pointed  out,  I  half  suspect  that  his 
faults  lie  in  the  region  where,  to  use  his  own  word, 
he  is  most  complacent:  in  brief,  that  a  certain  nar- 
rowness holds  him  within  well-defined  bounds.  In 
many  ways  he  does  not  conform  to  his  creed.  Others 
have  faith  in  the  future  of  America,  with  her  arts  and 
letters,  yet  hesitate  to  lay  down  rules  for  her  adop- 
tion. These  must  come  of  themselves,  or  not  at  all. 
Again,  in  this  poet's  specification  of  the  objects  of  his 
sympathy,  the  members  of  every  class,  the  lofty  and 
the  lowly,  are  duly  named  ;  yet  there  always  is  an  im- 
plication that  the  employer  is  inferior  to  the  employed, 
—  that  the  man  of  training,  the  "  civilizee,"  is  less 
manly  than  the  rough,  the  pioneer.  He  suspects 
those  who,  by  chance  or  ability,  rise  above  the  crowd. 


HIS  SPECIAL   CONSTITUENCY. 

What  attention  he  does  pay  them  is  felt  to  be  in  the 
nature  of  patronage,  and  insufferable.  Other  things 
being  equal,  a  scholar  is  as  good  as  an  ignoramus,  a 
rich  man  as  a  poor  man,  a  civilizee  as  a  boor.  Great 
champions  of  democracy  —  poets  like  Byron,  Shelley, 
Landor,  Swinburne,  Hugo  —  often  have  come  from 
the  ranks  of  long  descent.  It  would  be  easy  to  cite 
verses  from  Whitman  that  apparently  refute  this  state- 
ment of  his  feeling,  but  the  spirit  of  his  whole  work 
confirms  it.  Meanwhile,  though  various  editions  of 
his  poems  have  found  a  sale,  he  is  little  read  by  our 
common  people,  who  know  him  so  well,  and  of  whose 
democracy  he  is  the  self-avowed  herald.  In  number- 
less homes  of  working-n\en  —  and  all  Americans  are 
workers  —  the  books  of  other  poets  are  treasured. 
Some  mental  grip  and  culture  are  required,  of  course, 
to  get  hold  of  the  poetry  of  the  future.  But  Whit- 
tier,  in  this  land,  is  a  truer  type  of  the  people's  poet, 
—  the  word  "  people "  here  meaning  a  vast  body  of 
freemen,  having  a  common-school  education,  homes, 
an  honest  living,  and  a  general  comprehension  far 
above  that  of  the  masses  in  Europe.  These  folk 
have  an  instinct  that  Whittier,  for  example,  has  seized 
his  day  with  as  much  alertness  and  self-devotion  as 
this  other  bard  of  Quaker  lineage,  and  has  sung  songs 
"fit  for  the  New  World"  as  he  found  it.  Whitman 
is  more  truly  the  voice  and  product  of  the  culture  of 
which  he  bids  us  beware.  At  least,  he  utters  the  cry 
of  culture  for  escape  from  over-culture,  from  the  weari- 
ness, the  finical  precision,  of  its  own  satiety.  His 
warmest  admirers  are  of  several  classes :  those  who 
have  carried  the  art  of  verse  to  super-refined  limits, 
and  seeing  nothing  farther  in  that  direction,  break  up 
the  mould  for  a  change;  those  radical  enthusiasts 
who,  like  myself,  are  interested  in  whatever  hopes  to 
25 


335 


Not  the 
people's 
Poet. 


Whittier. 


Whitman 
a  product 
of  the 

times,  and 
a/avorite 
with 
special 
classes. 


386 


WALT  WHITMAN. 


The  charm 
o/Thoreau 
and  Bur- 
roughs. 


Whit- 
man's ex- 
cessive for- 
malism. 


Art  vs. 
Artifice. 


bring  us  more  speedily  to  the  golden  year;  lastly, 
those  who,  radically  inclined,  do  not  think  closely, 
and  make  no  distinction  between  his  strength  and 
weakness.  Thus  he  is,  in  a  sense,  the  poet  of  the 
over-refined  and  the  doctrinaires.  Such  men,  too,  as 
Thoreau  and  Burroughs  have  a  welcome  that  scarcely 
would  have  been  given  them  in  an  earlier  time.  From 
the  discord  and  artifice  of  our  social  life  we  go  with 
them  to  the  woods,  learn  to  name  the  birds,  note  the 
beauty  of  form  and  flower,  and  love  these  healthy 
comrades  who  know  each  spring  that  bubbles  beneath 
the  lichened  crag  and  trailing  hemlock.  Theocritus 
learns  his  notes  upon  the  mountain,  but  sings  in 
courts  of  Alexandria  and  Syrapuse.  Whitman,  through 
propagandists  who  care  for  his  teachings  from  meta- 
physical and  personal  causes,  and  compose  their  own 
ideals  of  the  man,  may  yet  reach  the  people,  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  lasting  works  usually  have  pleased  all 
classes  in  their  own  time. 

Reflecting  upon  his  metrical  theory,  we  also  find 
narrowness  instead  of  breadth.  I  have  shown  that 
the  bent  of  a  liberal  artist  may  lead  him  to  adopt  a 
special  form,  but  not  to  reject  all  others  ;  he  will  see 
the  uses  of  each,  demanding  only  that  it  shall  be  good 
in  its  kind.  Swinburne,  with  his  cordial  liking  for 
Whitman,  is  too  acute  to  overlook  his  formalism. 
Some  of  his  eulogists,  those  whom  I  greatly  respect, 
fail  in  their  special  analysis.  One  of  them  rightly 
says  that  Shakespeare's  sonnets  are  artificial,  and  that 
three  lines  which  he  selects  from  "  Measure  for  Meas- 
ure "  are  of  a  higher  grade  of  verse.  But  these  are 
the  reverse  of  "  unmeasured "  lines,  —  they  are  in 
Shakespeare's  free  and  artistic,  yet  most  measured, 
vein.  Here  comes  in  the  distinction  between  art  and 
artifice  j   the   blank-verse   is   conceived   in   the  broad 


EXCESSIVE  FORMALISM. 


387 


spirit  of  the  former,  the  finish  and  pedantry  of  the 
sonnet  make  it  an  artificial  form.  A  master  enjoys 
the  task  of  making  its  artifice  artistic,  but  does  not 
employ  it  exclusively.  Whitman's  irregular,  manner- 
istic  chant  is  at  the  other  extreme  of  artificiality,  and 
equally  monotonous.  A  poet  can  use  it  with  feeling 
and  majesty ;  but  to  use  it  invariably,  to  laud  it  as  the 
one  mode  of  future  expression,  to  decry  all  others,  is 
formalism  of  a  pronounced  kind.  I  have  intimated 
that  Whitman  has  carefully  studied  and  improved  it. 
Burroughs  does  him  injustice  in  admitting  that  he  is 
not  a  poet  and  artist  in  the  current  acceptation  of 
those  terms,  and  another  writer  simply  is  just  in  de- 
claring that  when  he  undertakes  to  give  us  poetry  he 
can  do  it.  True,  the  long  prose  sentences  thrown 
within  his  ruder  pieces  resemble  nothing  so  much  as 
the  comic  recitativos  in  the  buffo-songs  of  the  con- 
cert-cellars. This  is  not  art,  nor  wisdom,  but  sensa- 
tionalism. There  is  narrowness  in  his  failure  to  recast 
and  modify  these  and  other  depressing  portions  of 
various  poems,  and  it  is  sheer  Philistinism  for  one  to 
coddle  all  the  weaknesses  of  his  experimental  period, 
because  they  have  been  a  product  of  himself. 

One  effect  of  the  constant  reading  of  his  poetry  is 
that,  like  the  use  of  certain  refections,  it  mars  our 
taste  for  the  proper  enjoyment  of  other  kinds.  Not, 
of  course,  because  it  is  wholly  superior,  since  the 
most  subtile  landscape  by  Corot  or  Rousseau  might 
be  utterly  put  to  nought  by  a  melodramatic  neighbor, 
full  of  positive  color  and  extravagance.  Nor  is  it 
always,  either,  to  our  bard's  advantage  that  he  should 
be  read  with  other  poets.  Consider  Wordsworth's 
exquisite  lyric  upon  the  education  which  Nature  gives 
the  child  whom  to  herself  she  takes,  and  of  whom 
she  declares :  — 


One  effect 
of  reading 
his  verse. 


Compara- 
tive crit- 
icism. 


388 


WALT  WHITMAN. 


The 

charge  of 
affecta- 
tion. 


Preten- 
sions. 


"The  stars  of  midnight  shall  be  dear 
To  her;  and  she  shall  lean  her  ear 
In  many  a  secret  place, 
Where  rivulets  dance  their  wayward  round, 
And  beauty  born  of  murmuring  sound 
Shall  pass  into  her  face." 

It  happens  that  Whitman  has  a  poem  on  the  same 
theme,  describing  the  process  of  growth  by  sympathy 
and  absorption,  which  thus  begins  and  ends :  — 

"  There  was  a  child  went  forth  every  day ; 

And  the  first  object  he  look'd  upon,  that  object  he  became ; 

And  that  object   became   part    of  him  for  the  day,  or  a  cer^ 
tain  part  of  the    day,  or  for  many  years,  or  stretching  cy- 
cles  of  years. 

The  horizon's  edge,  the  flying  sea-crow,  the  fragrance  of  salt- 
marsh  and  shore-mud ; 

These  became  part  of  that  child  who  went  forth  every  day, 
and  who  now  goes,  and  will  always  go  forth  every  day." 

Plainly  there  are  some  comparative  advantages  in 
Wordsworth's  treatment  of  this  idea.  It  would  be  just 
as  easy  to  reverse  this  showing  by  quoting  other  pas- 
sages from  each  poet :  the  purpose  of  my  digression 
is  to  declare  that  by  means  of  comparative  criticism 
any  poet  may  be  judged  unfairly,  and  without  regard 
to  his  general  claims. 

So  far  as  Whitman's  formalism  is  natural  to  him, 
no  matter  how  eccentric,  we  must  bear  with  it ;  when- 
ever it  partakes  of  affectation,  it  is  not  to  be  desired. 
The  charge  of  attitudinizing,  so  often  brought  against 
his  writings  and  personal  career,  may  be  the  result  of 
a  popular  impression  that  the  border-line  is  indistinct 
between  his  self-assertion  as  a  type  of  Man  and  the 
ordinary  self-esteem  and  self-advancement  displayed 
by  men  of  common  mould.  Pretensions  have  this 
advantage,  that  they  challenge   analysis,  and  make  a 


SELF-ASSERTION. 


389 


vast  noise  even  as  we  are  forced  to  examine  them. 
In  the  early  preface  to  the  "  Leaves  "  there  is  a  pas- 
sage modelled,  in  my  opinion,  upon  the  style  of  Emer- 
son, concerning  simplicity,  —  with  which  I  heartily 
agree,  having  constantly  insisted  upon  the  test  of  sim- 
plicity in  my  discussion  of  the  poets.  Yet  this  qual- 
ity is  the  last  to  be  discerned  in  many  portions  of 
the  "Leaves  of  Grass."  In  its  stead  we  often  find 
boldness,  and  the-*-'  pride  that  apes  humility,"  —  until 
the  reader  is  tempted  to  quote  from  the  "  Poet  of 
Feudalism  "  those  words  of  Cornwall  upon  the  rough- 
ness which  brought  good  Kent  to  the  stocks.  Our 
bard's  self-assertion,  when  the  expression  of  his  real 
manhood,  is  bracing,  is  an  element  of  poetic  strength. 
When  it  even  seems  to  be  "posing,"  it  is  a  weak- 
ness, or  a  shrewdness,  and  't  is  a  weakness  in  a  poet 
to  be  unduly  shrewd.  Of  course  a  distinction  must 
be  carefully  made  between  the  fine  extravagance  of 
genius,  the  joy  in  its  own  conceptions,  and  self-con- 
scious vanity  or  affectation,  — between,  also,  occasional 
weaknesses  of  the  great,  of  men  like  Browning,  and 
like  the  greatest  of  recent  masters,  Hugo,  and  the  af- 
flatus of  small  men,  who  only  thus  far  succeed  in 
copying  them.  And  it  would  be  unjust  to  reckon 
Whitman  among  the  latter  class. 

It  may  be  that  his  strictures  upon  the  poets  of  his 
own  land  at  one  time  made  them  hesitate  to  venture 
upon  the  first  advances  in  brotherhood,  or  to  intrude 
on  him  with  their  recognition  of  his  birthright.  As 
late  as  his  Centennial  edition,  his  opinion  of  their 
uselessness  was  expressed  in  withering  terms.  He 
declared  that  he  could  not  except  "  a  single  writer  " 
from  his  indictment  of  the  "  genteel "  producers  of 
"  pistareen,  paste-pot  work,"  and  inveighed  against 
the  "  copious  dribble,  either  of  our  little  or  well-known 


Frequent 
want  of 
trtte  sim- 
plicity. 


Whit- 
man's crit- 
icism of 
other  poets. 
E.g. 
"Demo- 
cratic 

Vistas^ 
(Centl. 
Ed.),  pp. 
32i  54,  58. 


39Q 


WALT  WHITMAN. 


A  n  egoist 
by  nature, 
and  on 
principle. 


rhymesters."  It  is  just  to  add  that  recently,  if  the 
reports  of  interlocutors  are  trustworthy,  he  has  ex- 
cepted "  Bryant,  Emerson,  Whittier,  and  Longfellow  — 
these  only  and  proportionately  in  the  order  given  " 
—  from  his  former  criticism,  and  has  stated  that  his 
general  attitude  is  eminently  respectful.  If  it  were 
not,  there  would  be  no  inconsistency,  in  view  of  his 
purpose  and  convictions,  nor  any  reason  for  complaint. 
There  was  no  consistency,  however,  in  complaints  that 
arose  in  various  quarters,  to  some  of  which  I  have 
before  referred,  concerning  a  lack  of  recognition  and 
encouragement  from  his  fellow-craftsmen.  There  is 
ample  ground  for  his  scorn  of  the  time-serving,  un- 
substantial quality  of  much  of  our  literature.  But  I 
should  not  be  writing  this  volume,  did  I  not  well 
know  that  there  are  other  poets  than  himself  who 
hear  the  roll  of  the  ages,  who  look  before  and  after, 
above  and  below.  The  culture  which  he  deprecates 
may  have  done  them  an  ill  turn  in  lessening  their 
worldly  tact.  I  am  aware  that  Whitman's  poems  are 
the  drama  of  his  own  life  and  passions.  His  sub- 
jectivity is  so  great  that  he  not  only  absorbs  all 
others  into  himself,  but  insists  upon  being  absorbed  by 
whomsoever  he  addresses.  In  his  conception  of  the 
world's  equality,  the  singer  himself  appears  as  the  one 
Messianic  personage,  the  answerer  and  sustainer,  the 
universal  solvent,  —  in  all  these  respects  holding  even 
"  Him  that  was  crucified  "  to  be  not  one  whit  his  su- 
perior. It  is  his  kiss,  his  consolation,  that  all  must 
receive,  —  whoever  you  are,  these  are  given  especially 
to  you.  But  men  are  egotists,  and  not  all  tolerant 
of  one  man's  selfhood  ;  they  do  not  always  deem  the 
affinities  elective.  Whitman's  personality  is  too  strong 
and  individual  to  be  universal,  and  even  to  him  it  is 
not  given  to  be  all  things  to  all  men. 


THE  ALPENGLOW. 


391 


VI. 

But  there  is  that  in  venerableness  which  compels 
veneration,  and  it  is  an  instinct  of  human  nature  to 
seek  the  blessing  and  revere  the  wisdom  of  the  poet 
or  peasant  transfigured  by  hoary  hairs  :  — 

"  Old  age  superbly  rising !    O  welcome,  ineffable  grace  of  dying 
days ! " 

I   was   one   of    a   small   but   sympathetic   audience 
gathered  in  New  York  to  hear  Mr.  Whitman,  at  the 
cordial   request    of    authors,   journalists,    and   artists, 
deliver   a   lecture    upon   Abraham    Lincoln.      As    he 
entered,  haltingly,  and  took  the  seat  placed  for  him, 
his  appearance   satisfied   the   eye.     His  manly  figure, 
clothed  in  a  drab   suit  that   loosely  and  well  became 
him,  his  head  crowned  with   flowing   silvery  hair,  his 
bearded,  ruddy  and  wholesome  face,  upon  which  sat  a 
look    of   friendliness,  the  wise   benignity  that   comes 
with  ripened  years,   all  these  gave   him  the  aspect  of 
a  poet  and   sage.      His   reminiscences  of   the  martyr 
President   were   slight,   but  he   had    read   the   hero's 
heart,  had  sung  his  dirge,  and  no  theme  could   have 
been  dearer  to  him   or   more  fitly  chosen.      The  lec- 
ture was  written  in  panoramic,   somewhat    disjointed, 
prose,  but  its  brokenness  was  the  counterpart  of   his 
vocal  manner,  with  its   frequent  pauses,  interphrases, 
illustrations.     His  delivery  was  persuasive,  natural,  by 
turns   tender   and   strong,   and   he   held  us  with   him 
from  the  outset.    Something  of  Lincoln  himself  seemed 
to  pass    into   this   man  who   had   loved   and   studied 
him.      A  patriot  of   the   honest   school   spoke   to   us, 
yet  with  a   new  voice  —  a   man  who  took   the   future 
into   his   patriotism,  and   the  world  no   less  than   his 
own  land. 


A  benign 
and  lov~ 
able  old 
age. 


Lecture 
u/>on  Lin- 
coln: New 
York,  1878. 


392 


WALT  WHITMAN. 


A  rhapso- 
dist. 


Nummary. 


I  wished  that  the  youths  of  America  could  hear  him, 
and  that  he  might  go  through  the  land,  reading  as  he 
did  that  night,  from  town  to  town.     I  saw  that  he  was 
by  nature  a  rhapsodist,  like  them  of  old,  and  should 
be,  more  than  other  poets,  a  reciter  of  the  verse  that 
so  aptly  reflects  himself.     He  had  the  round  forehead 
and  head  which  often    mark   the   orator,  rather   than 
the   logician.      He  surely  feels  with   Ben   Jonson,  as 
to  a  language,  that  "  the  writing  of  it  is  but  an  acci- 
dent," and   this  is  a  good   thing  to   feel   and   know. 
His  view  of  the  dramatic  value  of  Lincoln's  death  to 
the  future  artist  and  poet  was  significant.     It  was  the 
culminating  act  of  the  civil  war,  he  said  :  "  Ring  down 
the  curtain,  with   its   muses  of   History  and   Tragedy 
on  either  side."     Elsewhere  his  claim  to  be  an  Amer- 
ican of  the  Americans  was  strengthened  by  a  pecul- 
iarly national  mistake,  that   of   confounding   quantity 
with  quality,  of  setting  mere  size  and  vastness  above 
dramatic    essence.      When    the    brief    discourse    was 
ended,  he  was  induced  to  read  the  shorter  dirge,  "  O 
Captain  !   My  Captain !  "     It  is,  of  his  poems,  among 
those  nearest  to  a  wonted  lyrical  form,  as  if  the  gen- 
uine sorrow  of  his  theme  had  given  him  new  pinions. 
He  read  it  simply  and  well,  and  as  I  listened  to  its 
strange,  pathetic  melodies,  my  eyes  filled  with   tears, 
and  I  felt  that  here,  indeed,  was  a  minstrel  of  whom 
it  would  be  said,  if  he   could  reach  the   ears  of  the 
multitude  and  stand  in  their  presence,  that   not  only 
the   cultured,   but    "  the   common    people   heard  him 
gladly." 

Although  no  order  of  talent  or  temperament,  in 
this  age,  can  wholly  defy  classification,  there  never- 
theless is  a  limbo  of  poets,  artists,  thinkers,  men  of 
genius,  some  of  whose  creations  are  so  expressive,  and 


PARADOXICAL   GENIUS. 


393 


others  so  feeble  and  ill-conceived,  that  any  discussion 
of  their  quality  must  consist  alternately  of  praise  and 
adverse  criticism.  Reviewing  what  has  been  written, 
I  see  that  the  career  and  output  of  the  poet  under 
notice  are  provocative  of  each  in  some  extreme,  and 
unite  to  render  him  a  striking  figure  in  that  disputed 
estate. 

Walt  Whitman,  then,  has  seemed  to  me  a  man  who 
should  think  well  of  Nature,  since  he  has  received 
much  at  her  hands ;  and  well  of  Fortune,  since  his 
birth,  training,  localities,  have  individualized  the  char- 
acter of  his  natural  gifts ;  and  well  of  Humanity,  for 
his  good  works  to  men  have  come  back  to  him  in  the 
devotion  of  the  most  loyal  and  efficient  band  of  adher- 
ents that  ever  buoyed  the  purpose  and  advanced  the 
interests  of  a  reformer  or  poet.  He  has  lived  his  life, 
and  warmed  both  hands  before  its  fire,  and  in  middle- 
age  honored  it  with  widely  praised  and  not  ignoble 
deeds.  Experience  and  years  have  brought  his  virile, 
too  lusty  nature  to  a  wiser  harmony  and  repose.  He 
has  combined  a  sincere  enthusiasm  with  the  tact  of  a 
man  of  the  world,  and,  with  undoubted  love  for  his 
kind,  never  has  lost  sight  of  his  own  aim  and  reputa- 
tion. No  follower,  no  critic,  could  measure  him  with 
a  higher  estimate  than  that  which  from  the  first  he 
has  set  upon  himself.  As  a  poet,  a  word-builder,  he 
is  equipped  with  touch,  voice,  vision,  zest,  —  all  trained 
and  freshened,  in  boyhood  and  manhood,  by  genuine 
intercourse  with  Nature  in  her  broadest  and  minutest 
forms.  From  her,  indeed,  he  is  true-born,  —  no  bas- 
tard child  nor  impostor.  He  is  at  home  with  certain 
classes  of  men ;  but  here  his  limitations  begin,  for  he 
is  not  great  enough,  unconscious  enough,  to  do  more 
than  assume  to  include  all  classes  in  his  sympathy 
and  brotherhood.     The  merits  of  his  verse  are  lyrical 


Whit- 
man's 
equip- 
ment. 


394 


WALT   WHITMAN. 


His  gen- 
ius and 

limita- 
tions. 


His  future 
reputa- 
tion. 


passion  and  frequent  originality,  —  a  copious,  native, 
surprising  range  of  diction,  —  strong  feeling,  softened 
by  consummate  tenderness  and  pity,  —  a  method  low- 
ered by  hoarseness,  coarseness,  and  much  that  is  very 
pointless  and  dull,  yet  at  its  best  charged  with  melody 
and  meaning,  or  so  near  perfection  that  we  are  irked 
to  have  him  miss  the  one  touch  needful,  —  a  skill  that 
often  is  art,  but  very  seldom  mastery.  As  a  man  of 
convictions,  he  has  reflected  upon  the  idea  of  a  true 
democracy,  and  sought  to  represent  it  by  a  true  Amer- 
icanism ;  yet,  in  searching  for  it  and  for  the  archetypal 
manhood  chiefly  in  his  own  personality,  it  is  not 
strange  that  he  has  frequently  gratified  his  self-con- 
sciousness, while  failing  to  present  to  others  a  satis- 
factory and  well-proportioned  type  of  either.  His  dis- 
position and  manner  of  growth  always  have  led  him 
to  overrate  the  significance  of  his  views,  and  inclined 
him  to  narrow  theories  of  art,  life  and  song.  He 
utters  a  sensible  protest  against  the  imitativeness  and 
complacency  that  are  the  bane  of  literature,  yet  is 
more  formal  than  others  in  his  non-conformity,  and 
haughtier  in  his  plainness  than  many  in  their  pride. 
Finally,  and  in  no  invidious  sense,  it  is  true  that  he 
is  the  poet  of  a  refined  period,  impossible  in  any  other, 
and  appeals  most  to  those  who  long  for  a  reaction,  a 
new  beginning;  not  a  poet  of  the  people,  but  emi- 
nently one  who  might  be,  could  he  in  these  days  avail 
himself  of  their  hearing  as  of  their  sight.  Is  he, 
therefore,  not  to  be  read  in  the  future  ?  Of  our  living 
poets,  I  should  think  him  most  sure  of  an  intermittent 
remembrance  hereafter,  if  not  of  a  general  reading. 
Of  all,  he  is  the  one  most  sure  —  waiving  the  question 
of  his  popular  fame  —  to  be  now  and  then  examined  ; 
for,  in  any  event,  his  verse  will  be  revived  from  time 
to  time  by  dilettants  on  the  hunt  for  curious  treasures 


HIS  PLA  CE  IN  LITER  A  TURK. 


395 


in  the  literature  of  the  past,  by  men  who  will  reprint 
and  elucidate  him,  to  join  their  names  with  his,  or  to 
do  for  this  singer  what  their  prototypes  in  our  day 
have  done  for  Francois  Villon,  for  the  author  of  "  Jo- 
seph and  his  Brethren,"  and  for  William  Blake. 


CHAPTER    XI 


BAYARD    TAYLOR. 


Taylor's 
career  to 
be  noted  in 
illustra- 
tion  of 
recent 
conditions. 


The  ques- 
tion of  suc- 
cess. 


THIS  poet,  the  last  and  youngest  of  those  here 
made  the  subjects  of  distinct  review,  is  no  longer 
a  living  comrade.  The  consecrating  hand  that  re- 
moved him  enables  us  to  free  our  judgment  from 
bias  of  rivalry  or  affection. 

"Far  off  is  he,  above  desire  and  fear; 
No  more  submitted  to  the  change  and  chance 
Of  the  unsteady  planets." 

He  was  taken  in  his  prime,  with  work  spread  out  be- 
fore him,  yet  not  until  after  years  of  unceasing  pro- 
duction. We  find  ourselves  observing  one  whose 
ideal  was  higher  than  anything  which  his  writings, 
abundant  as  they  are,  express  for  us,  and  one  who 
none  the  less  has  claims  to  be  estimated  in  some  de- 
gree by  that  ideal.  His  life  was  noteworthy;  it  was 
a  display  of  heroic  industry,  zest,  ambition,  the  brav- 
est self-reliance,  —  and  from  slight  beginnings  he 
achieved  much.  But  he  was  one  whose  success  must 
be  gauged  from  within.  What  was  his  dream  ?  Did 
he  realize  it?  If  not,  what  hindered  him?  These 
questions  must  be  asked;  and,  in  trying  to  answer 
them,  we  see  the  peculiar  advantages  which  the  ca- 
reer of  Taylor  proffers  for  an  understanding  of  the 
literary  movement,  the  social  and  working  life,  in 
which  he  was  involved.  Not  that  he  was  our  most 
famous  singer,  nor  one  whose  score  was  completed,  — 


AUTHORSHIP  IN  NEW   YORK. 


397 


but  what  American  poet  ever  touched  life  and  let- 
ters more  variously?  He  let  nothing  go  by  him,  he 
essayed  everything,  and  he  furnishes  examples  of 
what  to  do  —  and  what  to  avoid.  Moreover,  his 
story  enables  us  to  study  American  authorship  under 
somewhat  different  conditions  from  those  which  have 
affected  the  Cambridge  group,  and  with  it  a  period 
whose  bisecting  line  is  indicated  by  the  date  of  the 
beginning  of  our  civil  war. 

The  task  laid  upon  the  pioneers  of  letters  in  New 
York  has  been  sufficiently  hard,  —  always  the  need 
of  devotion,  toil,  patient  laying  of  foundations  on 
which  others  shall  build.  Inherited  names  and  re- 
sources, and  the  advantage  of  university  life,  have  fa- 
vored the  growth  of  the  New  England  school.  Poets 
who  have  strayed  into  New  York  —  and  here  they 
are  more  seldom  born  than  imported  —  have  carried 
the  harp  with  one  hand  and  some  instrument  of  labor 
with  the  other,  and  have  sung  their  songs  in  such 
noonings  as  they  could  obtain.  Almost  without  ex- 
ception they  have  been  thrown  upon  journalism  for 
a  support,  and  have  experienced  whatever  good  and 
evil  that  profession  brings  to  the  aesthetic  sense  of 
its  practitioner.  Bayard  Taylor  was  not  only  a  sturdy 
and  courageous  example  of  a  poet  born  out  of  New 
England,  but  must  be  studied  with  the  period  already 
named.  Younger  than  our  chief  poets  still  living,  he 
stood  with  a  few  companions  who  found  their  music 
broken  in  upon  by  the  tumult  of  a  national  war. 
Thus,  we  are  to  consider  the  writings  of  one  who 
dates  half-way  between  the  elder  and  the  rising  gen- 
erations j  who  was  not  of  Cambridge,  nor  of  Concord, 
but  from  the  Middle  States  ;  and  in  whose  works,  al- 
though the  product  of  a  life  of  action,  we  always  find 
the  influences  of  the  study  and  the  hearth. 


NewYork. 
Seep.  53. 


Obiter 
cantata. 


The  Civil 
War. 


398 


BAYARD   TAYLOR. 


A  versa- 
tile au- 
thor. 


Born,  in 

Kennett 

Square, 

Penn., 

Jan.  ii, 

1825. 


Early  life 
dnd  long- 
ings. 


I. 

Taylor  was  the  most  versatile  of  authors.  This 
was  the  result  of  constitutional  tendency,  increased 
by  the  exigencies  of  American  life  and  his  own  life 
in  particular.  He  was  one,  I  think,  whose  natural 
gift  could  as  well  be  understood  through  his  personal 
qualities  as  from  his  works.  His  presence  and  story 
were  so  unreservedly  before  us  as  to  afford  para- 
digms of  the  birth  and  breeding  of  a  poet.  A  critic 
takes  kindly  to  verse  which  has  a  man  behind  it.  He 
strives  to  put  himself  in  harmony  with  the  singer's 
youth,  manhood,  and  intellectual  prime,  —  to  measure 
his  ideals  no  less  than  his  performances,  —  to  feel  his 
aids  and  restrictions,  —  to  breathe,  as  it  were,  the 
very  breath  of  his  inspiration.  It  is  worth  while  to 
bear  in  mind  the  region  from  which  this  poet  came, 
and  the  kinship  that  exists  between  the  fields,  the 
trees,  the  air,  and  all  living  and  sentient  things  be- 
longing to  a  given  spot  of  earth.  The  happy  pas- 
toral county  of  a  central  State  produced  Bayard  Tay- 
lor from  its  oldest  and  purest  Quaker  stock.  Here 
lie  the  broad  undulating  meadows  and  woodlands  of 
a  section  wholly  characteristic  of  the  temperate  zone. 
Here  nature  has  no  extremes  of  grandeur  or  pictu- 
resqueness,  nor  any  gloomy  aspects,  but  is  simple,  at- 
tractive, strong;  here  it  blends,  as  in  English  rural 
landscape,  all  attributes  in  just  proportion.  The  sons 
of  such  a  soil  are  rounded  and  even  in  their  make, 
sound  of  brawn  and  brain,  open  to  many  phases  of 
life,  — -  not  likely,  once  having  touched  the  outer  world, 
to  content  themselves  with  one  experience  or  one 
purpose. 

Young  Bayard  throve  upon  the  nourishment  which 
Nature   offered  him.     His  sensibilities  were  those  of 


EARLY  EXPERIENCES. 


399 


her  poets   and   artists.      The   trees,   the   flowers,   the 
grasses,  he  knew  them  all ;  he  was  no  sportsman,  but 
"named  all  the   birds  without  a  gun."     His  farming 
duties  often  were   forgotten   in  rovings   and   reveries, 
and  moods  uncomprehended  either  by  himself  or  by 
those  about  him.     Then  the  eager  devouring  of  books, 
old-fashioned  novels,  history,  travels  ;  above  all,  of  the 
poetry  within  his  reach.      His  youth  was  that  of  the 
traditional   American   boy,    and   here,    as   always,   the 
story  of  Rasselas  repeats   itself.      The   fairest   native 
valley  palls  upon  the  lad  who  as  yet  has  nothing  by 
which  to  measure  its  worth.     Tranquillity  for  the  old ; 
for  the  young,  a  longing  for  a  new  and  larger  range. 
But   time  rights  all    things  :    as  no  town-bred  person 
ever  really  knows  the   country,  so  no   country-lad  in 
older  years  forgets  the  secrets  Nature  taught  his  child- 
hood.    Taylor  had  through  life  the  frank  and  some- 
what homely  simplicity  of  the  yeoman,  cosmopolite  as 
he  was.     In  time  he  learned  how  glad  his  youth  had 
been,  and   again  and   again  returned  to  the  fields  of 
Kennett.      But  the  boy's    impatience  of  his   confines 
was  early  shown.      After  the   schooling  at  a  country 
academy,  where  he  studied  well,  came  the  revolt  from 
farm-life  and  the  alternative  selection  of  a  trade.     Of 
course  he  chose  to  be  a  printer,  and  at  the  age  of  sev- 
enteen became  an   apprentice   in  West  Chester.     Al- 
ready he   had   found  his   gift  of   making  verses,  and 
now  took  fire  with  the  thought  of  being  a  poet.     The 
publication  of  his  juvenile  pieces  grew  out  of  his  de- 
sire to  see  the  world. 

A  thin  little  book,  now  so  hard  to  find,  entitled 
Ximena,  was  dedicated  to  Griswold,  in  gratitude  for 
"kind  encouragement"  shown  the  author.  It  shows 
the  course  of  his  early  readings :  Byron,  Scott,  Moore, 
Mrs.  Hemans,  Bryant,  are  echoed  here  and  there.     A 


"Ximena  ; 
.  .  .  and 
Other  Po- 
ems? 1844. 


400 


BAYARD   TAYLOR. 


Sonorous 
quality. 


His 

"  Trav- 
els ":from 
''''Views 
Afoot,'" 
1846,  to 
"Egypt 
and  Ice- 
land,'" 
1874. 
{Eleven 
vols.) 


"Roaming 
•with  a 
hungry 
heart.'''' 


blank-verse  poem  is  inscribed  to  Whittier,  whose  name 
was  a  household  word  in  the  Quaker  home.  Though 
this  book  contained  no  new  note,  it  did  show  the  am- 
bition and  facile  gift  of  the  writer.  One  quality  is 
apparent  which  afterward  marked  his  verse,  —  a  pe- 
culiar sonorousness,  especially  in  the  use  of  resonant 
proper  nouns,  the  names  of  historic  persons  and  places. 
"  Ximena "  was  printed  at  a  venture,  for  the  purpose 
of  increasing  the  savings  with  which  to  undertake  a 
tramp  over  Europe,  at  that  time  an  almost  fanciful 
design.  From  the  proceeds  he  was  enabled  to  see 
those  patrons  in  Philadelphia  who  advanced  him,  on 
the  pledge  of  his  future  labors,  the  little  sum  which 
encouraged  him  to  set  out  upon  his  travels.  After 
reaching  New  York  he  hastened  to  the  Tribune  office,  at 
that  time  the  Mecca  of  rustic  enthusiasts,  few  of  whom 
placed  too  modest  a  valuation  upon  their  own  powers. 
However,  it  was  no  common  youth,  this  stripling  of 
nineteen,  who  won  the  interest  of  Horace  Greeley,  and 
already  had  found  practical  friends  in  Willis,  Griswold, 
Godwin,  and  the  kindly  editor  of  "Graham's  Maga- 
zine." 

Here  I  may  as  well  consider  the  sentiment  of  the 
journeys  which  employed  so  large  a  portion  of  his 
life,  and  the  quality  of  their  record.  The  latter  be- 
gan in  1846  with*  the  famous  Views  Afoot,  and  ended 
with  Egypt  and  Iceland  in  the  Year  18/4,  a  date  only 
five  years  previous  to  the  sudden  close  of  his  career. 
The  gist  of  the  matter  is  that  Taylor  was  a  poet 
upon  his  travels.  A  national  instinct  was  expressed 
in  the  going  out  of  this  wiry,  erect,  impetuous  young 
man,  "to  see  the  world."  The  same  desire  that  brings 
a  Western  youth  to  the  Atlantic  shore  has  sent  our 
coast-born  lads^on  strange  voyages  to  many  lands. 
Grant  White  averred  that  while  the  air  of  England  was 


the  ^travels: 


yet  new  to  him,  he  felt  that  it  was  something  n  e  was 
"born  to  breathe."  For  us  the  old  strangeness  and 
distance  no  more  yield  the  charm  which  belonged  to 
the  pages  of  Irving  and  Willis  and  Mitchell. 

But  in  Taylor's  case  no  home-ambition  could  restrain 
his  desire  for  travel.     He  went  abroad  that  he  might 
see   and   learn  and  grow.     His  journals  were   under- 
taken chiefly   to    give   him    the  means   of    adventure. 
He   made  no   scientific   pretensions.     He   was    some- 
thing of  a  botanist,  a  natural  geographer,  could  see  the 
form  beneath   the   color,  and  had  enough   of  general 
knowledge  to  make  his  narrative  rich  and  intelligible. 
Before  all,  he  sought  the  delight  of  the  eye,  and  that 
series  of  sensations  which   Pater  declares   to   be  the 
sum  of  life.     He  had  a  poet's  sense  of  the  best  every- 
where, and  a  poet's  sympathy  with  any  land  to  which 
he  came.     Hence  we  journey  with  him,  and  enjoy  his 
own  emotions ;  we  experience  his  passion  to  reach  the 
summits,   the    ultimate    deserts,    the    extreme    capes. 
Such  is  the  spirit  of  his  Travels.     We  read  much  in 
them  of  scenery  and  external  things  ;  he  reserved  for 
his  private  letters  what  he  had  to  say  of  the  men  and 
women  whose  friendship  he  gained.     His  perceptions 
enabled  him,  though  going  rapidly  over  many  regions, 
to  get  the  special  quality  of  each.     In  all  these  books 
there  is  the  essential  truth  of  the  poet ;  if  they  are  a 
reporter's  letters,  they  are  those  of  a  poet  acting  as 
reporter.     He  wrote   of  what  he  saw,  and   saw  with 
faithful  eyes. 

Viewing  them  in  this  light,  I  have  little  to  add  in 
respect  to  their  literary  merits.  The  style  is  that  of 
true  prose ;  no  sing-song  and  sentimentalism ;  a  clear 
and  wholesome  medium  of  expression.  Its  two  ex- 
tremes, of  compact  polish  and  unstudied  freshness,  are 
to  be  found,  the  one  in  that  collection  of  sketches 
26 


His  aim 
and  equip- 
ment. 


Prose 
style. 


4-02 


BAYARD   TAYLOR. 


The  Tri- 


"Rhymes 
of  Trav- 
el, Bal- 
lads, etc.,' 
1848. 


See  "  The 
Literati.'" 


A  portrait 
by  Read. 


which  was  almost  his  last,  the  "  By-Ways  of  Europe," 
and  the  other  in  the  romantic  "  Views  Afoot "  —  the 
story  of  his  first  tour,  whose  publication  made  him 
widely  known,  and  invested  him  with  a  friendly  inter- 
est. His  connections  were  influential.  Greeley  and 
Dana,  editors  of  the  journal  to  whose  staff  he  was 
attached,  which  had  an  immense  inland  circulation, 
and  with  whose  radical  tenets  he  was  in  sympathy, 
took  pleasure  in  advancing  his  reputation. 

Early  success,  and  the  attention  of  the  public,  — 
great  things  for  any  author,  —  are  still  not  without 
peril  to  the  faculty  divine  of  the  poet.  Taylor  had 
kept  up  the  habit  of  putting  his  impressions  into  verse. 
Two  years  after  his  return,  he  printed  the  Rhymes  of 
Travel.  The  preface  stated  that  this  was  the  first 
venture  to  which  he  had  "  intrusted  a  hope  of  success, 
for  the  sake  of  Poetry  alone."  Among  the  best- 
remembered  lyrics  is  "A  Bacchic  Ode."  A  few 
Western  ballads  gave  freshness  to  the  book.  It  was 
approved  by  Poe,  who  found  imaginative  eloquence  in 
Taylor's  style,  but  on  the  whole  these  Rhymes  do  not 
seem  to  me  remarkable  even  as  a  poet's  first  offering. 
Bayard  was  now  twenty-four  years  old,  and  surely, 
recalling  the  work  of  Bryant,  and  Keats,  and  Shelley, 
at  or  before  the  same  age,  could  not  be  thought  a 
precocious  singer.  There  was  little  then  in  American 
life  to  stimulate  precocity  in  song.  Besides,  his  nature 
was  so  ardent  that  slight  and  common  sensations  in- 
toxicated him,  and  he  estimated  their  effect,  and  his 
power  to  transmit  it  to  others,  beyond  the  true  value. 

Nothing  so  quaintly  indicates  the  place  he  now  held, 
and  the  conception  formed  of  him  by  his  provincial 
readers,  as  the  sentimental  portrait  by  Buchanan  Read 
which  served  as  a  frontispiece  to  the  "Rhymes  of 
Travel."     The  steel  engraving  gives  us  Taylor  as  he 


ARCADIA. 


403 


pauses  in  the  act  of  climbing  the  Alps.  A  slender 
youth,  in  face  and  form  resembling  Shelley,  and 
equipped  like  one  of  Bunyan's  Pilgrims,  with  a  palm- 
er's hat,  blouse  and  belt,  and  a  shepherd's  crook  in 
his  hand  for  an  alpenstock ;  lofty  peaks  in  the  back- 
ground ;  all  deliciously  operatic  and  impossible.  Such 
was  the  popular  notion  of  Taylor,  and  it  often  brought 
out  a  merry  laugh  from  him  and  his  friends  in  later 
years.  But  those  were  simple,  fortunate  times  for  the 
young  minstrel,  who  took  his  success  modestly  and 
gladly,  nor  forgot  his  work  withal;  and  he  now  en- 
joyed a  season  as  poetic  as  ever  afterward  came  to 
him.  Indeed,  he  now  was  in  circumstances  more  fa- 
vorable than  in  later  years  for  the  cultivation  of  his 
art.  He  had  secured  the  means  of  support,  and 
formed  associations  which  gave  him  the  fellowship  and 
rivalry  of  comrades  in  taste  and  ambition.  He  got 
hold  of  what  he  needed,  art-life,  and  embraced  it  with 
a  zest.  Through  his  established  success  he  could  aid 
and  encourage  his  friends,  and  they  in  turn  did  good 
to  his  hand  and  training.  Sooth  to  say,  he  prized 
his  Arcadian  life  far  more  than  his  sudden  honors;  it 
always  was  first  in  his  affections.  He  loved  his  brother 
bards  with  the  full  strength  of  his  large  mould,  gave 
them  freely  of  his  praise,  and  frankly  welcomed  their 
appreciation  in  return. 

A  newspaper  mission  to  the  new  Eldorado  gave  him 
some  picturesque  themes.  In  that  pioneer  time  the 
scenes  and  groups  upon  the  Pacific  coast  had  not  the 
aspect  which  Bret  Harte  has  caught  and  used  so  well. 
But  there  was  a  fresh  atmosphere  in  the  pictures  of 
Taylor's  "  Californian  Ballads,"  and  a  ring  in  their 
tone.  Stoddard  and  himself  had  met  shortly  before 
this  journey.  They  were  within  a  year  of  each  other 
in  age,  and  their  friendship,  when  Taylor  settled  down 


"Excel- 
sior l" 


The  "con- 

sonancy 
of  our 
youths 


Califor- 
nian bal- 
lads, of 
1849. 


Taylor 
and  Stod- 
dard. 


4<H 


BAYARD   TAYLOR. 


Boker. 


"A  Book 
of  Ro- 
mances., 
Lyrics, 
and 
Songs" 
1851. 


"Hylas?" 


See  p.  311. 


again  to  city  journalism,  became  close  and  stimula- 
tive. The  aspirations  of  the  two  poets  were  the  same. 
They  held  counsel  together  in  their  sky-chambers, 
and  wrote  and  studied  in  concert.  Their  books  were 
dedicated  to  each  other.  Soon  Boker,  of  Philadel- 
phia, a  year  or  two  their  senior,  —  born  to  what  Gris- 
wold  termed  "  a  life  of  opulent  leisure,"  but  always 
the  ally  of  his  brother-poets,  —  became  the  third  in  a 
chivalrous  trio.  His  "  Calaynos  "  had  given  him  rep- 
utation as  a  dramatic  poet.  A  life-long  friendship  was 
established  among  the  three.  All  this  seems  the  mem- 
ory of  salad-days,  but  it  is  from  such  enthusiasms  that 
new  poetic  fashions  grow.  Ten  years  more,  and 
younger  poets  were  added  to  the  group,  —  O'Brien, 
Aldrich,  and  others,  —  among  whom  Taylor  was  a 
central  figure,  holding  the  friendship  of  all. 

Meanwhile  these  Arcadian  influences  had  told  upon 
his  genius.  He  brought  out  in  Boston,  under  the 
classic  auspices  of  the  Ticknor  house,  a  volume  which 
gave  the  first  measure  of  his  lyrical  powers.  A  Book 
of  Romances  contained  pieces  that  rank  among  the 
best  he  wrote.  Here  was  the  style,  quite  matured, 
which  seems  most  genuinely  his  own.  The  chief  value 
of  the  collection  was  in  miscellaneous  pieces  that  have 
the  quality  which  makes  good  art  always  fresh  to  us. 
These  rank  with  the  best  American  verse  written  up 
to  that  time.  Nor  do  I  know  one  of  our  elder  or 
younger  poets  who  might  not  be  glad  to  have  com- 
posed such  an  idyl  as  "  Hylas,"  with  its  strong  blank- 
verse  made  soft  and  liquid  by  feminine  endings,  the 
Dorian  grace  infused  with  just  enough  sentiment  to 
make  it  effective  in  modern  times.  It  is  worthy  of  a 
place  in  Landor's  "  Hellenics,"  and  in  my  own  mind 
always  is  associated  with  «  The  Hamadryad."  None  of 
Taylor's  later  classical  pieces  is  quite  so  good  as  this. 


A  BOOK  of  romances: 


405 


There  also  are  two  charming  oriental  stories,  in  blank- 
verse,  —  a  measure  which  he  managed  well,  —  "  Ku- 
bleh,"  and  "The  Soldier  and  the  Pard."  "Ariel," 
"Sorrowful  Music,"  and  the  "Ode  to  Shelley,"  re- 
mind us  too  much  of  that  poet,  from  whose  influence 
Taylor  never  quite  freed  himself,  nor  desired  to  free 
himself,  until  his  dying  day.  These  are  fine  poems, 
and  so  are  others  notably  his  own  —  "Sicilian  Wine," 
"Taurus,"  "  Serapion,"  and  "The  Metempsychosis  of 
the  Pine."  The  last-named  lyric  may  be  taken  as  a 
specimen  of  his  characteristic  mode. 

I  have  said  that  this  volume  contained  the  first 
fruits  of  an  interval  when  the  poet  felt  most  keenly 
the  compensations  of  art-life.  And  so  it  did  ;  for  it 
was  by  work  like  this  that  he  was  able  to  pass  be- 
neath and  out  from  the  shadow  of  a  sombre  cloud. 
The  painful  romance  of  his  youth;  the  lingering  ill- 
ness of  the  girl  to  whom  he  was  betrothed,  the  mar- 
riage only  a  month  before  she  died,  —  all  this  broke 
in  upon  precious  days,  and  effected  more  than  a  tem- 
porary change.  It  was  Taylor's  nature  not  to  take 
lightly  such  a  loss,  nor  to  hold  loosely  so  tender  a 
memory.  His  grief  was  foretokened  in  the  Decem- 
ber lyric,  "  Moan,  ye  wild  winds,  around  the  pane  !  " 
It  was  the  motive  of  a  succession  of  memorial  pieces, 
expressing  moods  of  sorrow,  that  ended  only  years 
afterward,  with  the  "vision"  of  "The  Poet's  Jour- 
nal." But  now  it  wore  him  down,  sent  him  again  on 
his  wanderings,  and  determined  that  his  life  should 
become  one  of  restless,  varying  action. 

His  most  extended  journey  began  in  185 1,  shortly 
after  the  appearance  of  the  "  Romances."  He  trav- 
elled in  Spain,  Egypt,  the  Orient,  etc.,  until  1854, 
and  during  this  time  not  only  wrote  the  letters  which 
made  three  volumes  of   prose,  but   also  continued  to 


Influence 
of  Shelley. 


Mary  Ag- 
new :  died, 
Dec,  1850. 

See  "Life 

and  Let- 
ters of 
Bayard 
Taylor. 
Edited  by 
Marie 
Hansen- 
Taylor 
and  Hor- 
ace E. 
Scudder," 
1884. 


406 


BAYARD   TAYLOR. 


"Poems  of 
the  Ori~ 
ent,''  1854, 


His  best 

lyrical 

work. 


A  western 
Asiatic. 


exercise  his  poetic  skill.  The  main  result  was  the 
Poems  of  the  Orient. 

This  volume  contains  the  best  work  of  his  purely 
lyrical  period,  and  may  justly  be  characterized  as 
vivid,  spontaneous,  harmonious  in  tone  and  artistic 
in  execution.  Of  all  the  regions  which  Taylor  now 
had  traversed,  the  Orient  seemed  most  nearly  to 
touch  his  own  nature.  His  adaptability  to  the  life 
and  sentiment  of  any  land  was  surprising;  he  was 
our  typical  example  of  the  only  being  that  can  ac- 
commodate itself  to  all  extremes  of  climate  and  cus- 
tom. But  he  seemed  to  have  been  born  for  the  Ori- 
ent, and  if  his  Songs  do  not  set  forth  the  East  as 
orientals  know  it,  they  do  set  forth  Taylor  in  the 
East :  — 

"The  Poet  knew  the  Land  of  the  East,— 
His  soul  was  native  there." 

It  needed  not  Hicks's  picture  of  the  bronzed  travel- 
ler, in  his  turban  and  Asiatic  costume,  smoking,  cross- 
legged,  upon  a  roof-top  of  Damascus,  to  show  how 
much  of  a  Syrian  he  then  was.  Others  saw  it  in 
those  down-drooping  eyelids  which  made  his  profile 
like  Tennyson's;  in  his  aquiline  nose,  with  the  ex- 
pressive tremor  of  the  nostrils  as  he  spoke ;  in  his 
thinly  tufted  chin,  his  close-curling  hair ;  his  love  of 
spices,  music,  coffee,  colors,  and  perfumes;  his  sen- 
sitiveness to  out-door  influences,  to  the  freshness  of 
the  morning,  the  bath,  the  elemental  touch  of  air 
and  water  and  the  life-giving  sun.  It  is  to  be  found 
in  the  "  Poems  of  the  Orient,"  where  we  have  these 
traits  reflected  in  diverse  lyrics  that  make  a  fascinat- 
ing whole.  In  them  he  seemed  to  give  full  vent  to 
his  flood  of  song.  Whether  from  regard  to  the  crit- 
icism that  charged  him  with  rhetoric  and  exuberance, 


POEMS  OF  THE   ORIENT? 


407 


or  from  the  languor  of  work  and  travel,  in  after  life 
his  poetry  often  was  more  restrained,  less  fervid  and 
exhilarating. 

The  tone  of  the  Eastern  poems  is  by  turns  glowing 
and  languorous,  and  usually  rich  in  color  and  sound. 
The  poet's  intellect  keeps  him  above  the  race  he  cel- 
ebrates. A  western  Epicurean,  he  gets  the  best  out 
of  the  East,  —  its  finest  passion  and  wisdom  and  its 
changeless  soul.  A  sonnet  interprets  Nubia,  the  land 
of  dreams  and  sleep  :  — 

"  Hush !  for  she  does  but  sleep ;  she  is  not  dead  : 
Action  and  Toil  have  made  the  world  their  own, 
But  she  hath  built  an  altar  to  Repose." 

The  varying  skies  of  Egypt,  the  Desert,  the  Syrian 
Coast,  of  Damascus,  of  Persia,  free  these  poems  from 
the  honeyed  monotony  of  Moore's  orientalism,  and 
the  bookishness  of  Southey's.  In  manner,  however, 
they  sometimes  remind  us  of  Byron  and  of  Hunt,  and 
even  of  Tennyson,  whose  melodies  have  haunted  so 
many  singers,  and  whose  "  Maud "  appeared  in  the 
same  year  with  the  lyrics  before  us.  Here  are  some 
oriental  tales  in  rhymed  pentameter,  and  one  in  octo- 
syllabic verse.  "  The  Temptation  of  Hassan  Ben 
Khaled  "  is  the  longest  and  best,  the  model  of  a  nar- 
rative poem.  William  Morris  has  done  nothing  better 
of  the  kind.  One  wishes  that  Taylor  had  paid  more 
attention  to  narrative  poetry,  availing  himself,  like 
Morris,  of  legends  ready  to  his  hand.  He  told  a  story 
in  verse  so  easily  and  delightfully  that  he  always  un- 
derrated both  the  art  and  the  poets  who  have  excelled 
in  it.  "  Amran's  Wooing  "  is  another  good  story  —  a 
tale  of  the  Desert.  Here  also  are  songs,  that  will  last 
as  long  as  anything  the  poet  wrote :  — 

"  Daughter  of  Egypt,  veil  thine  eyes !  " 


Narrative 
verse. 


Two  nota- 
ble songs. 


408 


BAYARD   TAYLOR. 


"Poems  of 
Home  and 
Travel," 
1855. 

"  Put- 
nam'1 s 
Monthly," 
etc. 


and  the  favorite  "  Bedouin  Song":  — 

"  From  the  Desert  I  come  to  thee 
On  a  stallion  shod  with  fire ; 
And  the  winds  are  left  behind 

In  the  speed  of  my  desire. 
Under  thy  window  I  stand, 

And  the  midnight  hears  my  cry : 
I  love  thee,  I  love  but  thee, 
With  a  love  that  shall  not  die  — 
Till  the  sun  grows  cold, 
And  the  stars  are  old, 
And  the  leaves  of  the  Judgment  Book 
unfold!" 

There  is  a  reminiscence  of  Shelley  in  one  stanza  \  but 
this  song  has  its  own  character.  There  is  a  faultless 
idyl  in  quatrains,  celebrating  the  Hindoo  legend  of  the 
coming  of  Camadeva,  that  affords  a  fine  instance  of  a 
quality  which  marks  the  "  Poems  of  the  Orient,"  that 
of  restraint  —  the  reserved  strength  which  will  not  give 
one  stroke  too  much.  At  last  the  poet  folds  his  tent 
and  unwinds  the  turban  from  his  brow:  — 

*  The  sun  has  ceased  to  shine ;  the  palms  that  bent, 
Inebriate  with  light,  have  disappeared; 
And  naught  is  left  me  of  the  Orient 
But  the  tanned  bosom  and  the  unshorn  beard." 

These  lyrics  are  free  from  moralizing  and  show  little 
of  the  influence  of  Longfellow,  which  at  that  time  was 
so  visible  in  American  verse  ;  they  are  poetry  uttered 
for  poetry's  sake,  and  with  the  voice  that  sings  inde- 
pendently. 

A  revised  edition  was  issued  of  Taylor's  earlier 
poems,  including  also  maturer  pieces  written  for  the 
magazines.  Stoddard,  Taylor,  and  others,  were  now 
engaged  with  the  elder  poets  in  supplying  the  verse 
which  made  attractive  the  first  series  of  "  Putnam's 
Monthly  Magazine."     This   periodical  was  fortunate, 


A   DIVIDED  AMBITION. 


409 


like  a  successor,  "  The  Atlantic  Monthly,"  in  its  choir 
of  songsters.  Nor  was  it  wanting  in  prose-poems, 
such  as  the  delicate  and  haunting  stories  by  the  author 
of  "  Lotus-Eating "  and  "  Nile  Notes  of  a  Howadji." 
These  books  and  Taylor's  oriental  poems  were  the 
complements  of  one  another,  and  equally  refreshing  to 
the  stay-at-home  public  that  welcomed  them. 

The  poet-traveller  was  now  in  his  thirtieth  year. 
Assuming  that  his  work  now  showed  the  quality  of 
his  developed  gift,  we  may  examine  its  value.  If  he 
never  had  done  anything  more,  if  his  summons  had 
come  at  this  time,  —  there  would  have  been,  even  as 
now,  few  whose  taking-ofl  would  be  so  deplored, 
around  whose  memory  would  gather  a  more  regretful 
interest.  We  should  speak  of  the  promise  of  a  career, 
and  say,  "  Had  he  but  lived  ! "  He  did  live,  and  for 
years  was  a  working  man  of  letters,  and  must  be 
judged  by  his  product  to  the  end.  His  life  was  con- 
secrated to  poetry,  yet  not  devoted  to  it.  How  much 
this  means  !  Possibly  he  gained  all  the  laurels  he  had 
a  right  to  expect,  under  the  conditions  in  which  he 
acquiesced.  To  look  further  involved  the  surrender 
of  immediate  honors,  of  rare  experience,  of  growth 
in  various  directions.  It  would  have  been  strange  in- 
deed if,  at  his  age,  he  had  not  accepted  "the  goods 
the  gods  provide,"  —  trusting,  through  strength  and 
future  occasion,  to  make  even  his  half  service  of  the 
muse  as  effective  as  the  entire  fealty  of  others  who 
have  won  the  crown. 

Taylor  had  the  elements  of  prolonged  growth.  Being 
what  he  was  at  thirty,  the  undisturbed  practice  of  his 
art,  a  devotion  like  that  of  Tennyson's  or  Longfellow's, 
should  have  given  him  indisputable  poetic  fame.  He 
would  have  refined  that  subtler  sense  which,  as  no 
one  knows  more  surely  than  the  present  writer,  is  so 


Curtis'* 
ideal  writ- 
ings. 


Charac- 
teristics. 


A  divided 
ambition. 


4io 


BAYARD   TAYLOR. 


Capabili- 
ties. 


Personal 
traits. 


elusive,  so  often  dulled  or  stunted  by  the  force,  the 
outcry,  the  perturbing  conflicts  of  the  social,  the  trad- 
ing, the  professional,  or  even  the  patriotic  and  politi- 
cal, world  of  action  and  toil.  Still,  this  poet's  capa- 
bilities, aside  from  his  gift  of  song,  were  unique,  and 
pressed  for  employment.  His  memory  was  prodigious. 
Nothing  that  he  learned  was  forgotten,  and  he  learned 
without  effort.  After  a  single  reading  he  knew  a  poem 
by  heart,  and  could  repeat  whole  pages  of  his  favorite 
authors ;  and  there  was  little  that  he  did  not  read  or 
see.  His  perception  of  externals  was  alert  and  true  ; 
but  he  did  not  so  readily  catch  by  intuition  the  thoughts 
and  feelings  of  those  about  him.  He  had  a  fine  sense 
of  form  and  color,  drew  and  painted  creditably,  and 
seemed  a  natural  artist.  His  linguistic  powers  were 
well  known.  He  taught  himself  something  of  the 
classical  texts,  and  was  more  infused  with  the  antique 
sentiment  than  many  a  learned  Theban.  He  quickly 
caught  the  pass-words  and  phrases  of  any  language, 
Shemitic  or  Aryan,  wherever  he  journeyed.  German 
he  mastered,  wrote  in,  thought  in ;  it  became  so  much 
like  a  native  tongue  with  him  as  to  refute  the  theory 
that  one  gains  of  a  new  language  only  so  much  as  he 
loses  of  his  own.  His  personal  traits  were  no  less 
admirable.  To  think  of  him  is  to  recall  a  person 
larger  in  make  and  magnanimity  than  the  common 
sort;  a  man  of  buoyancy,  hopefulness,  sweetness  of 
temper,  —  loyal,  shrinking  from  contention,  yet  ready 
to  do  battle  for  a  principle  or  in  the  just  cause  of  a 
friend ;  stainless  in  morals,  and  of  an  honesty  so  nat- 
ural that  he  could  not  be  surprised  into  an  untruth 
or  the  commission  of  a  mean  act.  His  open  delight 
over  any  work  of  his  own  that  pleased  him  was  the 
reverse  of  egotism,  yet  often  misunderstood  by  those 
who   slightly  knew  him.     He   was  without    jealousy, 


HIS  POETIC  STYLE. 


411 


though  sometimes  ruffled  by  the  prosperity  of  quacks 
and  pretenders.  Yet  his  personal  ambition  and  aspira- 
tion were  very  great,  only  equalled  by  his  industry 
and  scrupulous  fulfilment  of  any  task  he  undertook. 
In  social  life  he  was  generous  and  unrestrained,  full 
of  the  knightly,  mirth-loving,  romantic  spirit;  a  poet 
who  kept  his  heart  green  to  the  last,  even  when  disease 
was  upon  him,  and  the  plethoric  habit  of  his  middle 
life.  These  dulled  his  eye,  but  never  broke  his  spirit 
nor  turned  his  thoughts  to  gall. 

As  a  poet,  I  say,  the  qualities  of  his  mature  style 
were  now  fairly  displayed.  From  the  beginning, 
rhythm,  the  surreusis  of  liquid  measures,  had  much 
to  do  with  his  sense  of  the  beautiful  in  verse,  and 
reacted  upon  his  imagination.  He  revelled  in  the  ef- 
fect of  the  broad  English  vowels,  the  "hollow  ae's 
and  oe's,"  and  in  the  consonantal  vigor  of  our  lan- 
guage. He  enjoyed  reading  aloud  the  poetry  of  Dar- 
ley,  of  Byron  and  Shelley,  and  read  his  own  with 
such  melody  and  resonance  that  one  who  listened  to 
its  chanting  sound  was  no  more  able  than  himself  to 
tell  whether  it  was  of  his  poorest  or  his  best.  Its 
dominant  quality,  therefore,  was  often  that  of  elo- 
quence, as  in  the  verse  of  Croly  and  Campbell.  Poe 
quoted  from  one  of  his  early  pieces,  to  show  that 
eloquence  and  imagination  may  go  together.  I  have 
said  that  Bryant  was  "  elemental "  in  his  communion 
with  sea  and  forest  and  the  misty  mountain  winds. 
Taylor,  as  to  the  general  range  of  his  poetry,  was 
ethnical  and  secular.  Nations,  races,  eras,  the  past 
and  future  of  mankind,  were  the  objects  of  his  re- 
gard \  he  got  his  material,  his  imaginative  pictures, 
from  their  aspect,  and  his  most  elevated  verse  relates 
to  their  historic  and  prophetic  phases.  His  art-method 
was  simple  and  direct,  obvious  rather  than  suggestive, 


Style  as  a 
poet. 


An  ethni- 
cal range. 


412 


BAYARD   TAYLOR. 


Over- 
facility. 


Involved 
expres- 
sion. 


His  Penn* 
sylvanian 
idyls. 


"The 
Quaker 
Widow," 
*tc. 


and  he  generally  composed  in  a  major  key.  Some  of 
his  measures  are  fresh  with  the  breeze  and  spray. 
In  other  moods  he  would  write  a  ballad,  or  a  tender 
lyric  like  "The  Song  of  the  Camp."  He  had  the 
spontaneity  of  a  born  singer;  but  with  it  a  facility 
that  was  dangerous  indeed.  His  first  draft  was  apt 
to  be  his  best  if  not  his  only  one.  He  had  few  af- 
fectations ;  his  instinct  being  against  obscurity  and 
oddness  of  expression.  He  made  his  verse,  as  far  as 
might  be,  the  clear  vehicle  of  his  feeling.  Of  late 
years,  in  the  desire  to  convey  his  deeper,  more  intel- 
lectual thought  and  conviction,  he  frequently  became 
involved,  and  a  metaphysical  vagueness  was  apparent 
even  in  his  lyrics.  At  such  times  critics  thought  his 
efforts  strained,  and  his  friends  declared  that  he  was 
not  working  in  his  best  vein. 


II. 

Much  of  Taylor's  poetry  does  not  bear  its  maker's 
hand-mark  so  distinctly  as  that  of  Longfellow  or 
Whittier  is  wont  to  do.  His  subjects  and  modes  of 
treatment  are  varied,  and  the  former  may  be  assorted 
in  groups,  —  the  classical  pieces,  the  dithyrambic  lyr- 
ics, the  poems  of  travel,  and  those  of  hearth  and 
home.  In  any  mood  he  was  apt  to  reach  a  certain 
standard  of  merit;  he  rarely  failed.  But  there  was 
one  field  —  though  he  scarcely  seemed  to  realize  its 
value  —  so  much  his  own  as  to  breed  for  him  a  num- 
ber of  rough  imitators.  From  it  he  made  such  stud- 
ies, of  the  rural  scenes  and  characters  he  best  knew, 
as  "John  Reid,"  "The  Old  Pennsylvania  Farmer," 
and  that  lovely  ballad,  unexcelled  in  truth  and  ten- 
derness of  feeling— "The  Quaker  Widow."  The 
poet  more  rarely  gave  voice  to  the  extremes  of  pas- 


CONDITIONS  AFFECTING  HIS   WORK. 


413 


sion.  Even  his  noon-day  health  and  manliness  some- 
times blunted  his  delicacy  of  touch.  And  yet,  when 
he  felt  with  his  whole  heart,  he  could  be  not  only 
refined  but  highly  imaginative,  as  in  "  Euphorion,"  — 
a  poem  addressed  to  friends  who  had  lost  a  dreamy 
and  beautiful  child  :  — 

"For,  through  the  crystal  of  your  tears, 
His  love  and  beauty  fairer  shine; 
The  shadows  of  advancing  years 
Draw  back,  and  leave  him  all  divine. 

"And  Death,  that  took  him,  cannot  claim 
The  smallest  vesture  of  his  birth, — 
The  little  life,  a  dancing  flame 

That  hovered  o'er  the  hills  of  earth, — 


"The  finer  soul,  that  unto  ours 
A  subtle  perfume  seemed  to  be, 
Like  incense  blown  from  April  flowers 
Beside  the  scarred  and  stormy  tree, — 


of 


The  wondering  eyes,  that  ever  saw 

Some  fleeting  mystery  in  the  air, 
And  felt  the  stars  of  evening  draw 

His  heart  to  silence,  childhood's  prayer  ! " 

These  stanzas  are  at  the  highest  reach,  I  think, 
Taylor's  lyrical  genius.  The  man  who  could  write 
them,  and  who  composed  the  Bedouin  Song  and  the 
Pennsylvanian  idyls,  was  a  poet  whose  fame  should 
be  dear  to  his  countrymen.  But  he  did  much  more. 
Of  what  kind,  and  under  what  conditions  ?  Here 
comes  in  the  lesson  of  his  life  as  a  poet,  and  it  is 
chiefly  as  a  poet  that  we  are  considering  him. 

Authors  are  pretty  sure  to  give  us  something  of 
value  when  they  render  the  feeling  of  localities  to 
which  they  belong.  A  sympathetic  poet  is  in  danger 
of  lessening  his  birthright  through  much  knowledge 
of  the  world  at  large.     Taylor  was   patriotic,  always 


"Eujno- 
rum." 


Remarks 
on  the  life 
ofthispoet 


414 


BAYARD   TAYLOR. 


Burns  and 
Whittier. 


Taylor's 
more  va- 
ried expe- 
riences. 


American;  yet  I  think  his  lyrical  mark  would  have 
been  still  higher  had  his  relations  been  confined,  if 
not  to  the  section  that  gave  him  birth,  at  most  to  his 
own  land  and  people.  His  native  qualities  were  not 
unlike  those  of  Burns  and  Whittier ;  these  three  poets 
were  more  similar,  as  they  came  from  the  mould, 
than  any  others  whom  I  call  to  mind.  Burns  was  a 
healthy  country  lad,  full  of  the  prodigal  force  of  na- 
ture, blown  on  by  her  breezes,  nurtured  by  her  soil, 
thrilled  by  emotions  as  he  felt  the  rich  sap  of  youth 
coursing  through  his  veins.  His  influences  were  those 
of  his  own  people.  His  first  efforts  imitated  the 
plodding  of  the  "Caledonian  Bards."  When  some- 
what matured,  he  awoke  to  the  beauty  of  the  true 
Scottish  minstrelsy,  and  adapted  his  own  song  to  it. 
Suppose  that  opportunities  for  travel,  wider  culture, 
varied  reading,  the  mastery  of  languages,  had  been 
given  him.  One  nail  drives  out  another.  He  might 
have  been  hampered  with  his  acquisitions;  his  muse 
would  have  subdued  her  strength  in  diverse  strains; 
he  no  longer  would  have  been  the  fine,  untrammelled 
specialist,  —  and  might  have  wholly  lost  his  native 
wood-notes  wild.  Whittier  owes  his  fame  to  his  se- 
clusion—  voluntary  or  involuntary  —  and  to  his  pres- 
entation of  the  themes  and  feeling  nearest  the  heart 
of  New  England.  His  work  is  thus  a  specific  addi- 
tion to  American  song.  His  early  pieces,  like  those 
of  Burns,  were  artificial.  It  was  not  until  after  growth 
and  fervid  conviction  that  his  lips  were  really  touched 
with  fire. 

It  was  Taylor's  good  fortune,  as  a  man  who  would 
live  his  life,  —  his  ill  fortune,  it  may  be,  as  a  poet,  — 
to  obtain  the  multiform  experience  for  which  his 
youth  had  longed.  We  admire  his  pluck  and  advent- 
ure, but  lament  what  was   lost  to  poetry.     At  times 


LIFE  AND  ART, 


415 


when    his    fine    spirit,    bound   within    a    home    range, 
would   have   made   the   most   of   its  surroundings,  he 
was  able   to  gratify  without   stint   his   love   of  travel 
and  observation.     His  poetic  gift  was  always  by  him ; 
but  surely  he   lost  much   in   exchange   for  what  he 
gained.     One  can  readily  conceive  the   lyrical  genius 
of  Whittier  as  subject   to  be   diffused   or  perplexed 
under  similar  conditions.     The  question   lies  between 
personal  attainment  and  the  extreme  utilization  of  an 
artist's   special   gift.     Taylor  chose   the   former.     He 
said,  "  If  I  have  any  ambition,  it  is  to  enjoy  as  large 
a  store  of   experience  as  this  earth  can  furnish."     In 
a  letter  which  I  received  from  him  he  wrote  :  "  If  I 
were  to  write  about  myself  for  six  hours,  it  would  all 
come  to  this:  that  life  is,  for  me,  the  establishing  of 
my  own  Entelecheia,  —  the  making  of   all  that  is  pos- 
sible out  of  such  powers  as  I  may  have,  without  vio- 
lently   forcing    or    distorting    them."      Circumstances 
aided   him   in   his   choice.     As   a  youth,   he   thought 
little  of  the  effect  upon  his  poetic  career,  or  possibly 
thought    he   was    promoting    it.      Later    on,   however 
"rich  and  ample"  his  life,  he  felt  a  sense  of  uneasi- 
ness.    He  cared   most  of   all,  in  his  heart  of  hearts, 
to  be  a  poet,  and  saw  that,  while  going  afar  to  invoke 
the  Muse,  he  had  given  her  the  less  chance  to  seek 
him.      Choose   between   the   ideal   and   the   actual  — 
such  is  the  alternative  of  art.     Few  can  eat  their  cake 
and    have    it,   too.     Delight   of   life    and    action    has 
turned   aside   many  a  swift  runner,  as  I  have   shown 
in  reference  to  Domett  and  Home.     Again,  whatever 
may  be  said  of  the  benefits  and  disadvantages  of  cult- 
ure, it  often  has  been  a  practical  injury  to  the  poet 
—  since   no   one   is   sure   of   life's   full   limit  —  to  set 
before  him  too  high  and  broad  an  ideal.     It  may  not 
always  be  best  to  aim  at  the  sun.     We  ask  of  a  man 


His  own 
theory  of 
life  and 
art. 


An  alter- 
native. 


416 


BAYARD    TAYLOR. 


His  envi- 
ronment. 


Art  and 
letters  in 
the  New 
World 
•metropo- 
lis. 


the  one  thing  he  can  do  better  than  other  men,  and 
often,  as  in  the  legend  of  Gaspar  Becerra,  "that  is 
best  which  lieth  nearest."  Then  there  are  hindrances 
born  of  success  itself,  and  to  these  Taylor  was  pecu- 
liarly subjected. 

He  became  involved  with  the  literary  life  of  New 
York,  and  at  a  trying  time.  It  was  just  early  enough 
for  him  to  receive  a  good  word  from  Poe,  and  late 
enough  for  him  to  witness  the  rout  of  the  "literati." 
Even  a  sham  literary  feeling  may  be  better  than  no 
feeling  at  all.  Has  New  York  gained  since  then  as 
a  literary  centre?  Yes,  and  no.  It  is  now  the  base 
from  which  our  authors  draw  their  supplies.  The 
great  journals,  the  profitable  magazines,  the  largest 
publishing  houses,  with  few  exceptions,  are  located 
there.  It  is  the  chief  centre  of  distribution,  and  will 
so  remain  until  some  future  period  shall  number  as 
many  great  centres  of  distribution  as  there  may  be 
characteristic  sections.  But  the  atmosphere,  —  the 
public  feeling  which  alone  can  foster  rising  art  and 
make  its  workmen  glad  and  creative,  —  this  gathers 
more  slowly.  Authors  are  tolerated,  respected,  valued 
as  accessories ;  but  not  always  understood,  nor  often 
intrusted  with  the  care  of  important  movements.  New 
York  has  a  sufficiency  of  writers  and  of  literary  ele- 
ments for  the  needs  of  many  smaller  cities;  but  the 
former  do  not  feel  themselves  sustained  by  that  sym- 
pathetic interest  which,  for  example,  encourages  the 
music  of  Naples,  the  art  of  Paris  or  Rome.  New 
York  is  great  in  material  progress,  generous  in  chari- 
ties; but  still  too  practical  to  do  much  more  than  to 
affect  an  aesthetic  sentiment.  Her  wealthy  classes  are 
groping  toward  the  comprehension  of  what  is  beauti- 
ful. They  have  schools  of  design,  and  are  surpassing 
not  only  the  troglodytes,  but  our  more  immediate  an* 


NEWSPAPER   WORK,  ETC. 


417 


cestors,  in  mural  decoration.  What  is  intellectually 
fine  we  have  yet  to  pursue  with  any  general  ardor. 
The  city  took  a  pride  in  Bryant  as  a  man  and  as  a 
picturesque  figure  on  state  occasions ;  but  how  many 
of  his  townsmen  had  read  the  most  of  his  poems, 
or  cared  to  read  them?  Herein  is  no  reason  for 
complaint ;  all  is  as  it  should  be.  If  individuals  are 
not  coddled  in  New  York,  they  at  least  have  an  equal 
chance,  and  there  are  not  lacking  assurances  of  fu- 
ture development. 

Thus  Taylor's  lot  was  cast  in  a  somewhat  uncon- 
genial city,  and  he  often  found  himself  praised  and 
courted  where  he  needed  the  stimulus  of  intelligent 
sympathy.  He  took  to  journalism,  and  it  was  his 
mainstay  through  life.  During  the  last  thirty  years, 
journalism  has  absorbed  much  of  our  best  talent,  and 
well  it  might,  for  it  demands  the  best.  No  severer 
test  can  be  applied  to  a  writer  than  that  of  his  ability 
to  furnish  leading  articles  regularly.  More  than  one, 
who  has  succeeded  easily  as  a  bookwright  or  essayist, 
has  found  his  equipment  and  his  power  of  composition 
inadequate  to  the  off-hand  production  of  compact,  pol- 
ished, well-informed  leaders,  such  as  are  needed  for 
the  editorial  pages  of  great  newspapers.  Journalism 
is  an  art ;  but  under  our  system  it  brings  little  be- 
yond his  weekly  stipend  to  the  sub-journalist.  The 
stipend  is  sure,  and  that  means  a  great  deal  to  one 
who  lives  by  his  pen.  Newspapers  thus  far  have  sup- 
plied the  readiest  market  to  a  writer,  and  the  maga- 
zines next  to  them.  The  task  of  daily  writing  for  the 
press,  while  a  good  staff,  is  a  poor  crutch  ;  it  diffuses 
the  heat  of  authorship,  checks  idealism,  retards  the 
construction  of  masterpieces.  Besides,  it  brings  an 
author  into  attrition  with  members  of  the  craft  who 
possibly  know  him  so  familiarly  as  to  underrate  him. 
27 


Journal- 
ism vs. 
ideality. 


See  pp. 
75-108, 
and  cp. 
"  Victorian 
Poets  "  : 
pp.  81,  82. 


4i8 


BAYARD    TAYLOR. 


Lecturing. 


"Cedar- 
croft" 


"  Little 
foxes:'' 


Question 
of  Amer- 
ican over- 
work. 


He  is  subjected  to  local  jealousies,  to  the  over-praise 
of  the  newspaper  which  befriends  him,  and  sometimes 
to  the  unjust  or  ungenerous  treatment  of  rival  sheets. 
All  this  may  be  thought  an  evil  peculiar  to  New  York, 
and  one  which  we  shall  outgrow.  But  the  same  phe* 
nomena  are  visible  in  the  matured  capitals  of  England 
and  France,  and  must  be  accepted  as  part  of  a  jour- 
nalist's warfare  and  surroundings. 

Newspaper-work,   then,    to   which   Taylor  owed    so 
much  of  his  current  reputation,  also  restricted  his  ad- 
vance as  a  creative  author.     He   felt  constrained  to 
hold,  by  this  and  by  lecturing,  the  popularity  he  had 
gained,  and  likewise  to  obtain  the  means  of  carrying 
out  his  scheme  of  life.     As  a  man  of  note,  his  home- 
pride  grew  upon  him.     He  chose  to  realize  a  dream  of 
possessing  a  sightly  house  and  broad  acres  in  Kennett, 
—  a  manor-home  where  he  could   place   his   parents, 
and  find  a  retreat  in  times  of  rest.     All  this  he  did, 
in  his  early  prime ;  such  a  man  can  have  anything  for 
which  he  will  pay  the  price.     Its  cost  to  him,  no  doubt, 
was  a  lessening  of  his  quality  as  a  poet.     A  pressure 
of  social  and  professional  duties  —  meetings,  speeches, 
correspondence  —  bore  upon  him  severely.     Under  it 
he  made  a  good  fight ;  hopeful,  generous,  considerate, 
trying  to  do  something  in  a  field  where  the  laborers 
were  too  few.     But  men  do  not  escape  from  tasks  they 
once  assume,  and  he  had  undertaken  to  earn  a  large 
income  and  survey  the  world,  on  the  one  hand,  and 
to  hold  the  Muse  by  her  pinions  on  the  other.     His 
poetry  had  to  be  composed  "between  spells"  and  on 
the  wing ;  more  than  all,  the  versatile  habit  of  his  life 
became  a  second  nature  to  him. 

There  is  much  unfairness,  however,  in  the  blame  to 
which  public  men  in  this  country  are  subjected  for 
their  overwork.     This  is  rather  a  matter  of  necessity 


THE  POETS  JOURNAL: 


419 


than  of  choice.  People  in  the  old  world  largely  in- 
herit their  means  and  methods  from  their  forbears  j 
new  men,  even  there,  often  have  the  habit  of  over- 
work fixed  upon  them  by  the  time  their  footholds  are 
secured.  But  the  statesmen  and  thinkers  of  Europe 
start  with  assured  incomes  more  commonly  than  do 
our  own,  and  are  not  forced  to  earn  their  bread  as 
they  go  along.  Our  Eastern  Brahmins,  however,  have 
had  for  the  most  part  resources  which  they  have  en- 
larged by  the  help  of  such  gentle,  scholarly  pursuits 
as  the  service  of  a  university  affords.  They  have 
shown  themselves  quite  willing  to  indulge  a  spirit  of 
restfulness  and  calm.  So  long  as  Americans  who  do 
not  inherit  estates  have  the  Anglo-Saxon  pride  and 
domestic  tenderness,  they  will  be  tempted  to  do  work 
elsewhere  than  in  a  garret,  and  rarely  be  able  to  drive 
from  their  minds  the  thought  of  its  effect  upon  an 
income-paying  constituency. 

III. 

Taylor  married  in  Germany,  and  his  choice  was 
fortunate.  She  whose  hand  he  gained  was  by  her 
talents  and  acquirements  in  every  sense  his  compan- 
ion, —  in  full  sympathy  with  his  purposes,  for  happy 
years  the  wise  and  tender  guardian  of  his  household, 
as  she  is  now  the  faithful  treasurer  of  his  memory 
and  fame.  Her  translations  made  his  works  known 
to  her  countrymen  ;  she  confirmed  his  taste  for  the 
thought  and  letters  of  her  Fatherland,  and  was  his 
constant  aid  in  the  study  of  them. 

The  Poefs  Journal  was  an  expression  of  the  happi- 
ness for  which  its  author  had  now  exchanged  the  tri- 
als of  the  past.  Its  chief  interest  is  found  in  a  rev- 
elation  of   the   author's   heart.      The   prelude,  to  the 


Married  to 
Marie 
Hansen,  of 
Gotha  : 
1857. 


"The  Po- 
et's Jour- 
nal" x86* 


420 


BAYARD    TAYLOR. 


Middle 
life. 


Taylor's 
Novels. 


mistress  of  Cedarcroft,  is  not  excelled  by  anything 
which  follows.  Years  afterward,  he  made  a  still  more 
earnest  avowal  of  his  wedded  content :  — 

"  With  thee  was  the  ceasing  of  sorrow. 
Hope  from  thy  lips   I   have  drawn,  and  subtler  strength  from 

thy  spirit, 
Sharer  of  dream  and  of  deed,  inflexible  conscience  of  Beauty  ! 
Though  as  a  Grace  thou  art  dear,  as  a  guardian  Muse  thou  art 

earnest, 
Walking  with  purer  feet  the  paths  of  song  that  I  venture, 
Side  by  side,  unwearied,  in  cheerful  encouraging  silence. 
Not  thy  constant  woman's  heart  alone  I  have  wedded ; 
One  are  we  made  in  patience  and  faith  and  high  aspiration." 

The  poet's  life  of  travel,  writing,  lecturing,  means- 
providing,  now  went  forward  busily.  Duties  and  hon- 
ors grew  upon  him.  His  interest  in  the  civil  war  gave 
birth  to  some  vigorous  popular  ballads.  We  need  not 
follow  his  public  career,  nor  his  periodical  returns  to 
the  shade  of  his  own  chestnuts  and  tulip-trees.  His 
friend  Aldrich  compares  Taylor's  life  to  a  drama,  of 
which  the  intervals  were  filled  with  the  music  of  his 
poetic  work  at  home.  Four  fifths  of  this  he  was  to 
enact,  and  we  thought  to  see  his  mind's  "  noblest  off- 
spring "  with  the  last ;  but  the  curtain  fell  abruptly, 
and  the  putting  out  of  the  lights  ended  a  performance 
that  steadily  had  grown  in  worth.  What  there  was 
of  it  was  marked  by  rare  experiences.  Among  his 
friends,  he  counted  the  wise  and  gifted  of  many  lands. 
He  had  their  respect  and  confidence ;  and  his  correv 
spondence  with  them  was  most  extensive.  His  pri- 
vate letters  were  delightful,  and  a  sheet  covered  with 
his  beautiful  handwriting  and  flowing  thoughts  was  a 
thing  to  prize  and  store  away. 

Partly  with  the  thought  to  try  his  hand  —  like 
Goethe,  whom  he  seemed  to  have  taken  as  a  master 
—  at   every  kind  of   work,  and    partly  as   a   form    of 


NOVELS  AND   CRITICAL    WRITINGS. 


421 


literature  suited  to  the  times,  he  essayed  novel-writ- 
ing. His  novels  sold  well,  and  appeared  to  hit  the 
popular  taste.  They  mostly  were  realistic  transcripts 
of  what  he  had  seen,  and  contained  his  own  views 
of  what  was,  and  what  was  lacking,  in  American  life 
at  that  time.  The  plot  of  Hannah  Thurston  is  noth- 
ing; the  tale  was  written  to  illustrate  types  of  char- 
acter and  phases  of  society,  —  especially  to  show  up 
the  mock-reforms  of  the  day.  The  heroine  is  a 
Quakeress,  as  good  and  original  a  creation  as  is  to 
be  found  in  the  whole  course  of  these  novels.  The 
hero,  like  most  of  their  heroes,  is  something  of  a 
muff.  Taylor's  second  novel,  John  Godfrey's  Fortune, 
has  commonplace  and  unattractive  New  York  scenes, 
but  these  are  truthful  records  of  the  side  of  life  with 
which  the  author  first  became  acquainted  in  the 
growing  city.  The  Story  of  Kennett  is  the  cleverest 
and  most  artistic  of  the  series;  a  romance  of  the 
old-fashioned  kind,  and  a  true  idyl  of  Pennsylvanian 
country-life  in  the  early  prime.  Meantime,  the  au- 
thor's short  stories,  contributed  to  magazines,  were 
always  fresh  and  good,  as  indeed  were  all  his  mis- 
cellaneous essays.  The  amount  he  threw  off  was  re- 
markable. He  wrote  prefaces,  edited  books  of  travel 
and  biography,  did  everything  a  man  of  letters  could 
do,  with  cheerfulness  and  facility.  His  prose  was 
simple,  clear,  good  English,  if  not  great.  Upon  the 
whole,  his  literary  criticisms  seemed  to  me  the  ripest 
and  most  valuable  portion  of  his  prose  labor.  In 
them  he  was  compact,  learned,  writing  to  the  point, 
and  his  opinions  were  just  and  good  with  regard  to 
both  the  spirit  and  technique  of  a  work.  In  later 
years,  his  reviews  were  so  catholic,  sound  of  canon 
and  exact  in  detail,  as  to  be  models ;  and  it  became 
evident  that  he  could  have  been  a  notable  critic,  had 


"Hannah 
Thurs- 
ton" 1863. 


"John 
Godfrey** 
Fortune" 
1864. 


"The  Sto- 
ry 0/  Ken- 
nett," 1866. 

"  Joseph 
and  His 
Friend," 
1870. 

Shorter 
Tales,  Es- 
says, etc. 


See  "Crit- 
ical Es- 
says," 


422 


BAYARD   TAYLOR. 


See  "Stud- 
ies in  Ger- 
man Lit- 
erature" 
1879. 


"Faust: 
Trans- 
lated, 
in  the 
Original 
Metres." 
Parts  I. 
tnd/I., 
1870-71. 


he  devoted  himself  to  criticism  alone.  He  had  abun- 
dant humor,  and  this,  with  his  judicial  faculty,  and 
his  talent  for  parody  and  burlesque,  found  play  in 
the  serio-comic  papers  which  were  collected  a  few 
years  before  his  death,  in  a  volume  called  The  Echo 
Club. 

Few  men,  not  excepting  Lewes  and  Carlyle,  have 
been  so  well  informed  as  Taylor  with  respect  to 
German  literature.  His  lectures  upon  that  subject 
were  prepared  originally  as  a  university  course.  For 
years  he  was  a  student  of  Goethe  and  Schiller  and 
their  times,  and  it  was  the  dream  of  his  life  to  write 
their  biography.  To  this  end  he  made  extended  re- 
searches in  Germany,  and  collected  material  under 
auspicious  conditions.  Had  he  lived  to  complete 
such  a  work,  it  would  have  been  a  masterpiece.  In 
the  midst  of  his  labors,  he  was  enabled  to  make  a 
complete  English  translation  of  "  Faust,"  in  the  orig- 
inal metres,  and  to  supervise  its  publication. 

IV. 

The  surprising  rapidity  with  which  the  two  parts 
of  Faust  were  brought  out,  the  original  commentary 
and  notes,  the  avowal  that  the  editor  had  read  all 
the  translations  and  commentaries  made  in  any  lan- 
guage, were  phenomena  of  that  kind  which  some- 
times led  people  to  distrust  the  thoroughness  of  Tay- 
lor's work.  The  scholarly  character  of  this  perform- 
ance is  now  well  established.  That  to  which  more 
than  one  of  his  predecessors  had  given  a  lifetime, 
he  apparently  completed  in  three  years.  He  had 
borne  it  in  mind,  however,  for  two  decades,  and  it 
was  his  habit  to  think  upon  a  task  until  able  to 
execute  it  at  a  dash  and  with  great  perfection. 


TRANSLATION  OF  'FAUST? 


423 


The  result  was  an  advance  upon  any  previous 
rendering  of  the  entire  work.  The  preface  demon- 
strates that  poetry  sometimes  absolutely  requires  a 
retention  of  the  original  metres  for  its  translation. 
Illustrations  of  this  are  found  in  Freiligrath's  perfect 
transcript  of  Scott's  "  Come  as  the  wind  comes," 
and  in  Strodtmann's  fine  "  Es  fallt  der  Strahl  auf 
Burg  und  Thai,"  — the  "Bugle-Song"  of  Tennyson. 
To  me  these  seem  extreme  cases :  in  others  the  re- 
sult might  be  otherwise.  A  translator  must  choose 
the  best  method  for  the  work  in  hand.  It  is  doubt- 
ful whether  the  test  would  apply  equally  well  to 
each  of  several  poets  who  differ  among  themselves 
as  widely  as  Homer,  Theocritus,  and  Pindar. 

The  characteristics  of  Taylor's  "  Faust "  are  sym- 
pathetic quality,  rapid  poetic  handling,  absolute  fidel- 
ity to  the  text.  Now  and  then  his  realistic  version 
of  the  first  part  has  an  unusual  or  quaint  effect, 
detracting  from  its  imaginative  design.  Hence  some 
of  the  best  portions  are  those  not  in  rhyme,  such 
as  the  Cathedral  scene,  where  Margaret  is  harassed 
by  the  Evil  Spirit :  — 

"How  otherwise  was  it,  Margaret, 
When  thou,  still  innocent  —  " 

which  is  reproduced  with  thrilling  power.  The  reg- 
ular verse  also  is  well  rendered,  Goethe's  "  Dedica- 
tion "  never  having  been  so  well  given  by  any  other 
translator.  Its  firm,  sonorous  stanzas  are  in  harmony 
with  Taylor's  own  manner  and  poetic  feeling:  — 

"  Again  ye  come,  ye  hovering  Forms !     I  find  ye, 
As  early  to  my  clouded  sight  ye  shone  ! 
Shall  I  attempt,  this  once,  to  seize  and  bind  ye  ? 
Still  o'er  my  heart  is  that  illusion  thrown? 
Ye  crowd  more  near!     Then,  be  the  reign  assigned  ye, 
And  sway  me  from  your  misty,  shadowy  zone  ! 


The  most 
poetic  and 
scholarly 
version. 


Its  method* 


The  "Ded- 
ication." 


424 


BAYARD    TAYLOR. 


Handling 
of  the  Sec- 
ond Part. 


Shelley. 


My  bosom  thrills,  with  youthful  passion  shaken, 
From  magic  airs  that  round  your  march  awaken. 

"And  grasps  me  now  a  long-unwonted  yearning 
For  that  serene  and  solemn  Spirit-Land  : 
My  song,  to  faint  yEolian  murmurs  turning, 
Sways  like  a  harp-string  by  the  breezes  fanned. 
I  thrill   and  tremble  ;   tear  on  tear  is  burning, 
And  the  stern  heart  is  tenderly  unmanned. 
What  I  possess,  I  see  far  distant  lying, 
And  what  I  lost  grows  real  and  undying." 

To  the  mystical  and   much   disputed  Second   Part 
the  lineal  method  of  translation  is  specially  adapted, 
and   serves   to   preserve   the   fantastic   nature   of   the 
original.     Taylor  had   the   gift   and  knowledge  which 
enabled    him    to   succeed   where    others    had    failed. 
He  felt  his  ability,  and  perhaps  too  readily  estimated 
the  greatness  of  this  part  by  the  difficulties  he  mas- 
tered.     The   best  poet,  other   things   being   equal,  is 
the   best   translator.      Opinions  may  differ  as  to   the 
merits  of  his  handling  of  the  First  Part  of  "  Faust," 
but  with   respect   to   that  of   the   Second  there  is  lit- 
tle question.      It   is   unlikely  that   any  great  English 
poet  soon  will  undertake  to  excel  it.     Carlyle  could 
have    made    the    venture,   for    he   was    essentially   a 
poet,  despite   his  outcry  against  verse.     Shelley,  had 
he  essayed  a  complete  version  and  made  his  studies 
accordingly,  might  have  left  us  the  ideal  translation 
—  for  he  was   the   ideal   translator.     His  paraphrase 
of  the  "  Hymn   to    Mercury "  is,  as   Emerson  would 
say,   more  original    than    the   original.      His   overture 
of  "  Faust "  is  in  some  way  more  grand  and  raptur- 
ous  than    Taylor's.      His   "  Walpurgis   Night"  is  full 
of  enchantment  —  too  soon  the  waving  ended  of  that 
magic  wand. 

Taylor's   notes   and   commentary   are   the   best   we 


'LARS? 


425 


have,  learned  and  intelligible,  equally  marked  by  po- 
etic feeling  and  good  sense.  His  critical  views  of 
the  Second  Part  should  be  more  authoritative  than 
those  of  others  less  conversant  with  the  subject  and 
less  truly  poets.  He  approves  of  Lewes's  state- 
ment: "I  have  little  sympathy  with  that  philosophy 
of  art  which  consists  in  translating  Art  into  Philos- 
ophy, and  I  trouble  myself  very  little  with  'consid- 
erations on  the  Idea.'"  In  disputed  passages,  he 
seeks  for  light  from  his  master's  other  writings, 
rather  than  from  German  and  English  commenta- 
tors. The  result  of  this  course  is  excellent,  and  I 
do  not  believe  that  any  other  translator  has  so 
nearly  reproduced  both  the  text  and  spirit  of  Goe- 
the's life-long  work. 

V. 

An  art-poem,  The  Picture  of  St.  John,  was  published 
by  Taylor  some  years  after  the  appearance  of  "  The 
Poet's  Journal."  His  talent  for  drawing  has  been 
mentioned  ;  he  was  exceedingly  fond  of  art,  and  not  a 
few  of  its  votaries  were  his  attached  friends.  The 
new  poem  was  dedicated  to  this  gentle  brotherhood. 
Its  theme  may  be  termed  the  development  of  an  ar- 
tist's powers  through  experience  of  the  joy  and  suffer- 
ing of  life.  The  tale  is  Italian,  as  regards  both  feeling 
and  incident ;  and  the  scene  is  laid  in  Italy  and  the 
Alps.  There  are  four  books,  of  stanzas  which  seem  a 
variation  upon  the  ottava  rima.  The  poet  spent  much 
time  upon  this  work,  and  it  has  many  graceful  pas- 
sages. But  as  a  fresh  and  original  conception  and  a 
charming  piece  of  workmanship,  I  prefer  Lars,  the 
only  sustained  poem  in  narrative  form  which  he  sub- 
sequently composed.  It  is  finely  conceived,  and  exe- 
cuted in   a    style   worthy  of    the   conception  —  which 


Taylor"1* 
Notes  on 
Faust. 


"The  Pic- 
ture of  St. 
John," 
1866. 


"Lars:  a 
Pastoral 
of  Nor- 
way" 
1873. 


426 


BAYARD   TAYLOR. 


"  Home 

Pastorals, 

Ballads, 

and 

Lyrics," 

1875. 


could  not  always  be  said  of  Taylor's  works.  In 
"Lars"  he  took  a  subject  quite  within  his  powers, 
and  realized  his  ideal.  The  scenes  change  from  the 
Norwegian  coast  to  the  Quaker  borders  of  the  Dela- 
ware, and  the  author  thoroughly  understood  the  land- 
scape, manners,  and  sentiment  of  the  two  regions. 
The  atmosphere  is,  by  turns,  fragrant  with  the  balsam 
of  Norseland  firs,  and  thymy  with  the  smell  of  new- 
mown  fields  across  the  western  sea.  A  contrast  is 
drawn  between  the  half-savage  habit  of  the  Norse-folk 
and  the  placid  religious  quality  of  our  pastoral  mid- 
land settlements.  The  combat  with  knives  between 
the  rival  herdmen,  Lars  and  Per,  is  a  virile  piece  of 
work.  Less  Tennysonian  and  even  more  poetic  are 
the  idyls  of  Norwegian  cottage  life,  which  precede  this 
scene.  This  blank -verse  poem  is  a  delightful  pro- 
duction ;  we  have  no  idyl  of  similar  length,  except 
"Evangeline,"  that  equals  it  in  finish  and  interest. 

A  subsequent  collection  of  miscellaneous  pieces  — 
the  Home  Pastorals,  to  some  of  which  I  have  referred 
—  was  made  by  the  poet.  Four  contemplative  poems 
of  the  seasons,  as  observed  from  the  porches  of  Cedar- 
croft,  are  excellent  of  their  kind,  and  have  been  under- 
valued ;  they  are  in  English  hexameter  verse,  for 
which  Taylor  had  a  good  ear,  and  only  narrative 
pieces  in  that  measure  obtain  a  popular  reading.  To 
me  they  seem  wise,  beautiful,  true  to  nature ;  resem- 
bling in  ease  and  freshness  Clough's  "  Bothie,"  and 
very  faithful  to  the  scenery  and  sentiments  of  the 
Pennsylvanian  border.  This  book  also  contains  some 
of  the  poet's  best  ballads ;  but  has  other  lyrics  quite 
uneven  in  merit.  It  is  notable  for  three  of  the  odes 
(exhibiting  his  taste  for  sweeping  Pindaric  measures) 
which  he  recited  upon  various  public  occasions  in  his 
later  years. 


'THE  NATIONAL   ODE. 


427 


The  Goethe  ode  and  the  one  delivered  at  Gettys- 
burg are  manly  and  heroic  poems.  The  Shakespeare 
ode  is  less  successful.  In  a  crowning  lyrical  effort,  he 
had  as  wide  an  audience  as  poet  could  desire.  He 
was  addressing  not  only  the  assemblage  in  Indepen- 
dence Square,  on  the  4th  of  July,  1876,  but  millions  of 
his  countrymen,  —  in  truth,  the  reading  world.  It  was 
a  fine  occasion,  and  all  his  ambition  was  aroused. 
What  poet  ever  had  a  more  historic  opportunity? 
Should  the  verse  of  all  his  contemporaries  be  forgot- 
ten, the  first  Centennial  Ode  will  be  revived  and  re- 
examined. 

The  National  Ode  was  not  unworthy  of  the  occasion, 
from  a  conventional  point  of  view.  It  was  sonorous, 
patriotic,  mindful  of  our  traditions,  full  of  dignity  and 
rhetorical  power.  As  such  it  was  received.  But  it 
was  not  the  one  new,  bold,  original  production,  which 
appeals  alike  to  the  wise  and  the  tfnlearned,  rouses 
the  imagination,  imprints  itself  upon  the  memory  of 
all  who  read  it,  and  becomes  a  lasting  portion  of 
national  literature.  Marvell's  ode  "  On  the  Return 
of  the  Lord  Protector "  and  Lowell's  "  Commemora- 
tion Ode  "  are  poems  of  this  kind  j  in  sooth,  Taylor's 
effort,  coming  after  the  latter,  demanded  all  his  cour- 
age. I  remember  urging  him  to  adopt  some  regular 
stanzaic  form,  however  complicated,  or  else  to  write 
his  poem  in  blank-verse  or  rhymed-heroic,  —  either  of 
these  measures  being  more  likely  than  the  irregular 
Pindaric  to  touch  and  hold  the  popular  heart.  It 
seemed  to  me  that  the  simplest  vehicle  would  best 
convey,  on  such  an  occasion,  the  noblest  thought.  His 
adverse  decision  was  guided  partly  by  precedent,  more 
by  his  instinctive  sense  of  an  ability  to  compose  and 
recite  musically  his  Pindaric  verse.  He  did  deliver 
his  ode  with  superb   effect,  and  felt  the  occasion  in 


"The  Na- 
tional 
Ode," 
1876. 


428 


BAYARD    TAYLOR. 


Dramatic 
Writings. 


"The 
Prophet : 
a  Trage- 
«#,"  '874. 


every  fibre 
distrust  to 
it  must  be 
orate  odes 
itself  upon 


of  his  mould.  Americans  refer  without 
this  poem,  but  few  recall  its  phrases ;  and 
acknowledged  that  even  of  Lowell's  elab- 
only  one  has  really  succeeded  in  fastening 
the  public  mind. 


VI. 


The  dra- 
ma, po- 
etry's 


One  more  division  of  Taylor's  manifold  productions 
remains  for  consideration,  —  to  wit,  his  dramatic  works. 
Of  these,  two  are  philosophical  studies  cast  in  dramatic 
form  j  the  intervening  one,  however,  is  a  five-act  play, 
the  interest  being  human  rather  than  speculative. 

The  Prophet  has  certain  claims  to  attention.  This 
work,  a  closet-drama  perhaps  as  easily  adapted  for  the 
stage  as  one  or  two  of  Browning's,  was  an  attempt  to 
treat  dramatically  a  modern  and  peculiar  American 
theme,  and  to  make  what  could  be  made  of  it.  Hints 
are  taken  from  the  early  history  of  Mormonism,  but 
the  central  figure,  instead  of  being  a  vulgar  impostor 
like  Joseph  Smith,  is  a  simple  and  pious  young  farmer, 
such  a  man  as  the  author's  own  county  might  have 
produced ;  intelligent  withal,  but  the  victim  of  the  re- 
ligious ecstasy  that  comes  to  one  without  knowledge 
of  books  and  the  world.  The  devices  of  shrewder 
comrades  and  the  jealousy  of  women  unite  to  deceive 
him,  and  to  persuade  him,  by  signs  and  miracles,  of 
his  prophetic  mission.  The  incidents  follow  naturally ; 
the  scenes  being  laid  first  in  New  England,  then  in 
the  far  West,  whither  the  Prophet  and  his  followers 
have  gone  to  found  a  sacred  city.  Internal  plots  and 
external  foes  bring  about  a  catastrophe,  ending  with 
the  death  of  the  hero  of  the  play. 

The  highest  form  of  poetry  is  the  drama,  for  it  in- 
cludes all  other  forms,   and  should  combine  them   in 


DRAMATIC    WORKS. 


429 


their  greatest  excellence.  At  its  best  it  is  the  supreme 
flower  of  the  literature  of  any  nation,  and  demands  a 
poet's  rarest  and  most  comprehensive  genius.  It 
scarcely  proffers  a  method  which  he  can  fully  master, 
late  in  life,  after  years  of  lyrical  or  idyllic  minstrelsy. 
The  dramatic  instinct  must  be  born  in  him  :  again,  his 
formative  period  must  find  him  in  a  region  where  a 
dramatic  tendency  already  fills  the  air.  Otherwise  his 
work  as  a  playwright,  like  that  of  Tennyson  or  Long- 
fellow, must  be  accomplished  by  an  artificial  effort, 
and  will  lack  the  touch  that  makes  the  whole  world 
kin.  Even  Browning,  with  his  immense  dramatic  re- 
sources, early  found  a  greater  hindrance  than  his  own 
subjectivity  in  the  non-sympathetic  spirit  of  his  people 
and  time.  "  The  Prophet "  failed,  in  view  of  its  au- 
thor's theme  and  purpose,  not  solely  from  his  lack  of 
early  dramatic  practice,  but  from  causes  which  hardly 
could  be  overcome.  Such  a  plot  might  be  treated 
idealistically,  by  giving  the  widest  range  to  imagina- 
tion, fearing  no  extravagance,  creating  one's  own  facts 
and  atmosphere,  and  the  result  might  be  a  great  dra- 
matic poem  if  not  an  acting  drama;  or  it  might  be 
treated  realistically,  —  the  course  which  Taylor  natu- 
rally pursued.  To  insure  success  by  the  latter  mode, 
the  time  and  events  of  a  drama  must  be  poetic  in 
themselves.  In  this  story  of  our  own  time,  there  is, 
perforce,  a  lack  of  the  illusive  and  entrancing  atmos- 
phere of  the  far-away  past.  That  which  is  too  modern 
and  familiar  seems  commonplace.  The  time  may 
come  when  as  much  shall  be  made  of  the  Mormon 
episode  as  of  the  traditions  of  the  Druses  or  of  John 
of  Leyden  ;  at  present  it  furnishes  a  store  of  clap-trap 
to  melodramatic  playwrights  who  derive  from  it  sub- 
stantial gains.  Taylor  drew  his  personages  with  skill, 
but  their  unheroic  character  was  against  the  passion  of 


highest 
form. 


Modes  of 
trtatment. 


430 


BAYARD   TAYLOR. 


Cp.  "  Vic- 
torian 
Poets": 


"The 

Masque  of 
the  Gods," 
187a. 


A  poet  of 

noble 

ideals. 


the  play.  The  work  illustrates  the  importance  of  cer- 
tain canons.  First,  nobility  of  theme  has  much  to  do 
with  the  value  of  art;  secondly,  realism  is  not  the 
chief  end  in  matters  of  design.  There  is  truth  —  and 
truth ;  the  truth  of  what  is  or  has  been,  and  the  truth 
of  what  may  be. 

The  lack  of  interest  felt  in  "  The  Prophet "  deterred 
its  author  from  further  experiments  of  the  kind.  His 
other  dramas  are  purely  ideal.  The  Masque  of  the 
Gods  presents  that  side  of  his  nature  which  was  most 
exalted  and  aspiring.  His  religious  temper,  it  has 
been  seen,  was  bred  under  other  influences  than  those 
which  restrict  the  faith  of  many  poets.  He  was  a  be- 
liever in  direct  inspiration,  but  a  questioner  of  revela- 
tion. The  creed  of  the  Progressive  Quakers  was  lib- 
eral and  humane,  and  the  boy  grew  up  to  regard  men 
of  all  races  as  his  brethren,  and  every  form  of  worship 
as  acceptable  to  an  Unknown  God  whom  he  himself 
addressed  in  the  spirit  of  Pope's  "  Universal  Prayer." 
This  sense  was  strengthened  by  his  travels  and  studies, 
and  his  religion  became  broader  than  any  man's  the- 
ology. "  The  Masque  of  the  Gods  "  —  a  title  with  a 
tinge  of  quaintness  below  the  dignity  of  the  subject  — 
is  a  drama  of  three  dialogues,  managed  in  a  severe 
and  classical  fashion.  It  approaches  as  near  to  the 
highest  grade  as  intellect,  eloquence,  and  fervent  glow, 

—  it  was  written  in  four  days,  "  almost  at  white  heat," 

—  can  lift  such  a  poem.  What  it  lacks  is  the  uncon- 
scious flight  into  that  empyrean  where  the  wings  move 
without  sound  and  touches  of  flame  hover  at  the  tips 
of  the  pinions.  The  conception  is  vast,  daring,  —  far 
more  imaginative  than  its  working  out. 

This  drama,  which  Taylor  rated  high  among  his 
productions,  and  which  is  in  every  sense  an  expression 
of  his  devotion  to  the  nobler  forms  of  song,  renders 


'PRINCE  DEUKALION.' 


431 


it  possible  for  one  to  assert  that  a  writer  may  be  judged 
somewhat  by  his  ideals,  and  that,  so  far  as  this  mode 
of  judgment  is  concerned,  its  author  held  a  significant 
place  in  the  group  of  American  poets.  It  was  the 
precursor  —  the  overture,  we  may  say  —  to  the  work 
that  was  his  swan-song,  the  larger  drama  which  he 
lived  to  complete,  and  of  which  a  fair  broad  copy 
reached  him  but  a  day  before  the  lyre  dropped  from  his 
hand  forever.  "  Of  his  last  work,"  wrote  his  bereaved 
wife,  — 4<  sein  Schwanen  Gesang,  as  I  call  it,  —  as  I 
would  call  it  in  my  mind  involuntarily,  long  before  I 
knew  he  was  deadly  ill,  he  only  saw  one  copy,  and 
that  of  the  English  edition." 

A  strange  interest  belongs  to  the  drama  of  Prince 
Deukalion.  The  poet  deferred  his  serious  work  upon 
the  life  of  Goethe,  that  he  might  be  sure  of  complet- 
ing this  one  poem  which  he  strove  to  make  his  best. 
Attention  may  be  directed  to  the  artistic  skill  with 
which  it  is  composed,  to  the  sounding  qualities  of  the 
main  body  of  its  verse,  and  to  the  varying  interludes 
marked  by  the  author's  lyrical  felicities  in  their  ma- 
turest  range.  Even  here  his  expression  retains  a  man- 
nerism which  grew  out  of  the  limited  vocabulary  pre- 
vailing when  he  learned  his  art  in  youth.  Certain 
words  and  effects  are  of  too  frequent  recurrence ;  but, 
allowing  for  all  this,  "  Prince  Deukalion "  will  bear 
examination  for  its  excess  of  rhythmical  beauty. 
America  has  produced  few  poems  so  admirable  for 
richness  and  variety  of  measures. 

The  subject  is  one  that  lay  near  Taylor's  heart, 
and  to  him  was  the  most  elevating  of  poetic  themes 
—  to  wit,  the  progress  of  mankind,  from  the  ignominy 
and  suffering  belonging  to  the  youth  of  the  world,  to 
the  golden  age  of  the  future.  The  thought  and  treat- 
ment of  the  drama  are  entirely  characteristic  of  the 


His  swan- 
song. 


"Prince 
Deuka- 
lion: a 
Lyrical 
Drama,"" 
1878. 


Rhyth- 
mical 
beauty. 


A  charac- 
teristic 
theme. 


432 


BAYARD   TAYLOR. 


Agathon's 
avowal. 


author.  The  early  portion  is  unquestionably  fine.  Pas- 
sages in  the  middle  and  latter  sections  show  a  falling 
off,  due,  it  may  be,  to  the  languor  of  illness  and  to  the 
pressure  of  the  instinct  which  made  the  poet  hasten 
to  the  completion  of  his  task,  but  at  the  close  he  again 
rose  to  a  noble  height.  It  is  easy  to  select  an  ex- 
ample of  the  vigorous  handling  of  the  structural  verse. 
His  Poet  declares  :  — 

"I  am  a  voice,  and  cannot  more  be  still 
Than  some  high  tree  that  takes  the  whirlwind's  stress 
Upon  the  summit  of  a  lonely  hill. 
Be  thou  a  wooing  breeze,  my  song  is  fair; 
Be  thou  a  storm,  it  pierces  far  and  shrill, 
And  grows  the  spirit  of  the  starless  air: 
Such  voices  were,  and  such  must  ever  be, 
Omnipotent  as  love,  unforced  as  prayer, 
And  poured  round  Life  as  round  its  isles  the  sea  1 " 

In  the  fourth  act,  the  words  of  Agathon  are  an 
expression  of  the  sentiment  and  hopeful  philosophy 
which  animated  Taylor's  whole  career :  — 

"But  I  accept  —  even  all  this  conscious  life 
Gives  in  its  fullest  measure  —  gladness,  health, 
Clean  appetite,  and  wholeness  of  my  claim 
To  knowledge,  beauty,  aspiration,  power  ! 
Joy  follows  action,  here ;  and  action  bliss, 
Hereafter!" 

But  at  last,  and  even  here,  it  seemed  as  if  —  to 
change  the  line  of  John  Webster  —  the  years  of  this 
loyal  and  eager  poet  had  felicities  too  many.  His 
rest  was  not  to  be  that  upon  which  he  counted.  Had 
he  drawn  his  own  horoscope  it  could  not  have  ap- 
peared more  perfect.  He  went  again  to  the  land  of 
his  earliest  pilgrimage,  encouraged  with  honors  and 
affection,  and  with  the  best  opportunities  for  the  pro- 
duction of  a  work  to  which  his  own  choice  and  the 
desire  of   the  entire   republic  of   letters   strongly  im- 


THOUGHTS  ON  HIS  CAREER. 


433 


pelled  him.  Hereafter,  he  was  to  have  calm  and  lei- 
sure. But  within  the  year  his  soul  was  required  of  him, 
and  one  more  broken  shaft  was  added  to  the  endless 
colonnade  by  which  we  testify  to  the  incompleteness 
of  this  our  earthly  life,  and  express  the  pity  of  it. 

Shortly  after  Taylor's  death,  a  fellow-writer,  who 
knew  him  well,  spoke  to  me  of  his  literary  career. 
"A  man  so  aspiring  and  sagacious,"  this  critic  said, 
"  could  be  satisfied  with  nothing  less  than  the  highest 
achievement,  the  soundest  professional  judgment  in 
his  favor."  Recognizing  the  point  thus  made,  I  would 
not  accept  it  as  a  test  of  his  genius.  It  seemed  to 
me  that  it  was  his  fortune,  however  wide  his  popular 
reputation,  to  be  underestimated  by  his  professional 
compeers.  His  gift  was  genuine  and  inherent,  but  it 
became  too  much  diffused ;  he  strove  to  survey  too 
large  a  precinct,  and  it  was  surprising  how  far,  in  more 
than  one  direction,  he  made  his  lines  extend.  With 
all  his  facility  and  purpose,  he  found  himself  in  a  too 
arduous  struggle  between  the  duty  of  the  hour  and 
the  still  higher  work  fashioned  after  "  the  pattern 
which  was  shewed  him  in  the  Mount."  He  set  him- 
self to  carry  out  an  almost  impossible  plan  of  life. 
His  manliness  in  this  and  other  respects  we  all  con- 
cede. During  his  experience  of  a  time  and  region 
which  made  Poe  a  weakling,  —  almost  an  Ishmaelite, 
—  with  what  pluck  and  heartiness  Taylor  faced  the 
situation,  until  it  seemed  as  if  the  very  god  of  strength 
took  pleasure  in  befriending  him!  After  all,  he  had 
some  right  to  count  upon  length  of  years,  and  to  shape 
his  plan  accordingly.  He  grew  in  taste  and  judgment 
as  he  grew  older,  and  even  his  devotion  of  so  much 
time  to  hack-work  was  not  without  its  requitals.  He 
led  a  singularly  happy  life  throughout,  and  the  cloud 
28 


Died  in 
Berlin, 
Germany, 
Dec.  19, 
1878. 


Final  con- 
sidera- 
tions* 


434 


BAYARD   TAYLOR. 


foretokening  its  close  was  but  of  brief  duration.  He 
was  fond  of  festivals,  of  joy ;  he  had  honor,  love,  and 
loyal  "troops  of  friends."  More  was  given  to  him 
than  was  taken  away,  and  his  memory  is  something  to 
dwell  upon  with  pleasure,  not  with  pain.  The  volumes 
of  his  song  are  left  to  us,  the  bequest  of  that  which 
he  thought  the  choicest  product  of  his  years.  No  one 
who  would  acquaint  himself  with  American  poetry  can 
overlook  Bayard  Taylor's  share  of  it.  Those  who 
would  understand  its  growth,  or  predict  its  future, 
must  bear  in  mind  the  generation  for  which  he  wrote 
and  the  story  of  his  efforts  and  environment. 


CHAPTER    XII. 


THE   OUTLOOK. 


IN  writing  upon  the  leaders  of  American  song,  I 
have  sought  to  make  our  various  studies  as  com- 
prehensive as  possible  within  due  bounds.  That  they 
might  be  both  critical  and  sympathetic,  and  afford 
new  illustrations  of  the  poetic  principle  and  the  tem- 
perament of  poets,  it  has  been  my  effort  to  approach 
the  subject  of  each  from  his  own  ground,  —  to  com- 
prehend his  motive  and  judge  him  at  his  best;  at 
the  same  time,  to  see  where  he  has  failed  of  that 
standard  and  of  the  true  spirit  of  ideal  expression. 
Such  an  effort  requires  to  be  taken  as  a  whole.  Iso- 
lated phrases,  and  even  sections,  may  be  misconstrued 
as  unfair  stricture  or,  on  the  other  hand,  as  if  biased 
by  personal  considerations.  Yet,  in  the  course  of 
each  study,  I  have  tried  to  draw  a  just  portrait,  and 
so  to  analyze  the  work  of  its  original  as  to  obtain  at 
least  an  approximately  correct  resultant. 

For  this  final  chapter,  —  relating  to  various  persons 
and  questions  of  the  time,  and  necessarily  less  cohe- 
sive and  animate  than  those  which  it  supplements,  — 
I  would  ask  that  its  parts  be  weighed  together,  if  at 
all.  It  has  a  distinct  purpose,  —  to  glance  at  the  ex- 
isting condition  of  our  poetry,  and  to  speculate  con- 
cerning the  near  future.  Not  to  prophesy  —  we 
scarcely  can  forecast  next  month's  weather  from  the 
numberless  shifting  currents  of  to-day.     Yet  one  may 


Retrospec- 
tive. 


Design  of 
this  chap- 
ter. 


436 


A    CRY  OF  FOREBODING. 


Cp.  "  Vic- 
torian Po- 
ets": 
p.  234. 


Recent 
forebod- 
ings. 


hopefully  surmise,  for  example,  that  a  dull  spell  will 
not  last  beyond  all  reason  and  experience.  The  past 
teaches  us  what  signs  indicate  the  change,  —  where 
blue  sky  will  first  appear,  —  and  that,  if  the  wind 
"backs,"  or  proves  fickle,  a  brightening  will  be  tem- 
porary and  delusive.  In  the  mood  of  a  cautious 
weather-sage,  then,  let  us  examine  the  late  reports 
from  the  signal-stations  that  together  show  the  prob- 
abilities. In  reviewing  the  poetry  of  England,  the 
general  drift  was  indicated  more  plainly  by  the  choir 
at  large  than  by  the  solos  of  a  few  striking  and  in- 
dependent voices. 

I. 

When  some  of  our  elder  poets,  their  careers  felic- 
itously rounded,  were  taken  from  us,  there  soon  arose 
a  cry  of  foreboding.  Who,  it  was  asked,  are  to  oc- 
cupy the  places  of  Bryant,  Longfellow,  Emerson  ? 
What  younger  men  can  equal  the  work  executed  by 
those  pioneers  when  the  latter  were  of  corresponding 
age  ?  A  period  of  decline  has  been  predicted.  It 
may  be  noted,  as  we  seek  to  determine  whether  the 
prediction  is  well  based,  that  a  similar  cry  is  heard 
from  across  the  sea.  The  work  of  Tennyson  and  the 
Brownings,  in  their  prime,  is  contrasted  with  that  of 
their  juniors,  and  critics  are  not  boastful  as  to  the 
promise  of  another  saengerfest.  I  venture  to  recall 
that  ten  years  ago  I  saw  the  beginning  of  a  poetic 
dusk,  and  expressed  a  belief  in  its  temporary  contin- 
uance. It  is  now  generally  perceived  and  lamented  \ 
nevertheless  it  seems  to  me  that  it  is  near  an  end, 
and  that  we  may  begin  to  look  for  a  new  day.  If 
this  is  to  differ  from  the  last,  —  if  we  who  enjoyed 
the  old  fashion  shall  find  it  hard  to  accustom  our- 
selves to  the  new,  —  the  young  will  speedily  interpret 


DISTRACTING  INFLUENCES. 


437 


it  for  us.     Their  estimate  of  relative  values  will  have 
its  own  gauge. 

The  rise  of  Poetry  in  America,  its  first  noteworthy 
and  somewhat  original  endeavor,  was  clearly  marked, 
and  in  the  main  coincident  with  that  of  the  Victorian 
School  abroad.  Before  long,  our  poetry  took  its  place 
with  standard  literature ;  its  authors  won  the  interest, 
even  the  affection,  of  an  attentive  public.  The  close 
of  the  term  involved  may  not  have  been  so  clear  to 
us.  Literary  periods  shift  with  mingled  sounds,  like 
those  of  bands  following  one  another  at  intervals  in 
a  procession.  But,  as  in  the  case  of  the  parallel  term 
abroad,  it  was  defined  sufficiently  for  us  now  to  look 
back  and  recognize  it.  The  influences  to  which  was 
due  a  diversion  of  interest,  and  which  brought  poetic 
aims  and  methods  into  doubt,  may  be  briefly  recapit- 
ulated. They  include  all  that  we  have  seen  prevail- 
ing throughout  Christendom  and  resulting  from  its 
accelerated  evolution  of  knowledge  and  energy:  the 
radical  change  in  the  course  of  imagination,  enforced 
by  the  advance  of  science,  —  the  disturbance  of  tra- 
dition and  convictions,  —  the  leap  from  romance  to 
realism.  We  must  allow,  too,  for  the  diversion  of 
genius  to  material  conquests,  adventure,  the  creation 
of  fortunes ;  and  for  the  growth  of  journalism,  and  of 
prose  fiction  answering  to  the  demands  of  the  time. 
All  the  resulting  influences  are  fully  as  dynamic  here 
as  in  the  Old  World,  and  some  of  them  far  more  so. 
But  other  factors,  peculiar  to  this  country,  must  not 
be  overlooked.  The  civil  war  was  a  general  absorb- 
ent at  the  crisis  when  a  second  group  of  poets  began 
to  form.  Their  generation  pledged  itself  to  the  most 
heroic  struggle  of  the  century.  The  conflict  not  only 
checked  the  rise  of  a  new  school,  but  was  followed 
by  a  time  of  languor  in  which  the  songs  of   Apollo 


Duration 
and  close 
of  our  first 
Poetic 
term. 


Recapitu- 
lation of 
distracting 
influences. 
Cp.  "Vic- 
torian Po- 
ets"'': 
PP  7-*9- 


See  pp.  17, 
26,  27. 


Th«  War. 


438 


THE  PUBLIC  APPETITE. 


Preemp- 
tion. 


A  new  pub- 
lic taste. 


See  pp.  54- 
58. 


A  brief 
mrvey 


seemed  trivial  to  those  who  had  listened  to  the  shout 
of  Mars.  A  manly  reaction  from  the  taste  for  rhet- 
oric and  sentiment  which  existed  before  the  war  de- 
generated into  the  indifferentism  lately  affected  by 
our  clever  youths.  Those  whose  lyrical  instinct  sur- 
vived through  all  conditions,  and  still  impelled  them 
to  sing,  found  themselves  subject  to  a  novel  disad- 
vantage. The  favorite  senior  bards  were  still  in  voice ; 
their  very  longevity,  fitting  and  beautiful  as  it  was,  re- 
strained the  zeal  and  postponed  the  opportunities  of 
pupils  who  held  them  in  honor.  Our  common  and 
becoming  reverence  prevented  both  the  younger  writ- 
ers and  the  people  from  suspecting  that  these  veter- 
ans were  running  in  grooves  and  supplying  little  new ; 
finally,  when  this  was  realized,  and  there  was  a  more 
open  field,  it  became  evident  that  the  public  was  sa- 
tiated with  verse  and  craved  a  change,  not  merely  of 
poets,  but  to  some  new  form  of  imaginative  literature. 
Original  genius  will  find  an  outlet  through  all  hin- 
drances;  be  the  air  as  it  may,  its  flight  will  be  the 
eagle's ;  but  it  will  be  apt,  at  such  a  time,  to  take 
some  other  direction  than  that  of  its  predecessors. 
All  in  all,  the  subsequent  incitement  to  lyrical  effort 
was  not  so  effective,  nor  was  the  opening  so  clear,  as 
in  the  period  that  favored  the  rise  of  Longfellow  and 
his  compeers. 

In  the  course  of  these  studies  I  have  referred  at 
some  length  to  a  few  poets  next  succeeding  those 
veterans,  —  some  who  now,  but  for  the  regard  shown 
them  by  younger  contestants,  would  scarcely  realize 
how  surely  they  are  becoming  veterans  themselves. 
Thus  age  succeeds  to  age,  and  still  Poesy,  — 

"blazoned  as  on  heaven's  immortal  noon, 
.  .  .  leads  generations  on." 

It  only  remains  for  us  to  take  an  outlook,  and  make 


PRELIMINARY  SURVEY. 


439 


note  of  what  poetic  activity  is  discoverable  at  the 
present  time.  With  respect  to  my  near  associates, 
and  to  the  increasing  circle  of  fresh  recruits,  whose 
chances  are  all  before  them,  I  repeat  my  statement 
that  it  would  be  out  of  taste  and  purpose  for  me  to 
assume  the  functions  of  a  critical  censor  or  appraiser. 
The  situation  can  be  studied,  and  some  conjecture 
made  of  the  future,  upon  a  rapid  (and  in  the  main 
uncritical)  summary  of  what  a  representative  number 
of  these  have  done  and  are  doing,  and  I  do  not 
think  our  conclusions  can  be  so  well  reached  in  any 
other  way. 

II. 

Whittier  and  Holmes,  the  two  oldest  survivors  of 
their  group,  find  their  audience  still  extending  with 
the  rapid  spread  of  culture  in  this  land.  Their  eyes 
are  scarcely  dimmed,  and  their  natural  strength  serves 
them  for  periodic  flights  of  song.  Lowell's  apparent 
retirement  in  favor  of  younger  writers,  though  doubt- 
less only  temporary,  is  the  one  courtesy  they  desire 
him  to  forego.  From  Whitman,  more  picturesque  than 
ever,  we  have  now  and  then  some  passing,  half-broken, 
yet  harmonic  strain,  striving  to  capture  the  substance 
of  things  seen  and  unseen.  I  have  written  already  of 
Taylor,  Stoddard,  Boker,  Trowbridge,  and  their  com- 
rades, with  whom  our  poetry  began  to  show  less  of 
the  ethical  and  polemic  fervor  that  brought  their  pred- 
ecessors into  repute.  No  new  cause  required  the 
lifting  up  of  hands,  and  they  meditated  the  muse 
from  simple  love  of  beauty  and  song.  Stoddard,  al- 
though a  hard-worked  man  of  letters,  has  been  true 
to  his  early  vows,  and  adds  to  our  songs  of  summer 
in  the  autumn  of  his  life.  Occasionally  also  he  writes, 
with  his  old  finish  and  tranquil   power,  one  of  those 


now  req- 
uisite. 


Its  char- 
acter. 


Emeriti. 


Next  in 
age.     See 
Chap.  II., 
etc. 


Stoddard. 


440 


WINTER.  —  A  LDRICH. 


A  younger 
group. 


William 
Winter : 
1836- 


Thomas 
Bailey 
Aldrich: 
1836- 


Beauty  of 
bis  verse 
tnd  prose. 


sustained  and  characteristic  blank -verse  poems  in 
which  his  faculty  is  at  its  highest.  Of  poets  a  decade 
younger,  Hayne,  Aldrich,  Winter,  Piatt,  Howells,  and 
a  few  others,  still  remain.  It  was  their  lot  to  begin 
at  just  the  time  when  the  country  had  forsworn  peace 
and  its  pipings;  but  they  none  the  less  took  heart, 
and  did  good  service  in  keeping  our  minstrel  line  un- 
broken through  good  and  evil  days  alike. 

Winter's  extreme  poetic  temperament,  and  his  loy- 
alty to  an  ideal,  have  made  his  frequent  sketches  of 
travel  very  charming,  and  have  imparted  to  his  dra- 
matic criticisms  the  grace  and  proportion  for  which 
they  are  distinguished.  The  melody,  ease,  and  sin- 
cere feeling  of  his  personal  tributes  and  occasional 
pieces  for  delivery  render  them  quite  unique.  The 
poem  read  at  the  dedication  of  the  monument  to  Poe 
is  an  elevated  production.  His  best  lyrics  have  caught 
the  spirit  of  the  early  English  muse. 

To  Aldrich,  now  in  his  sunny  prime,  —  the  most 
pointed  and  exquisite  of  our  lyrical  craftsmen, — justly 
is  awarded  a  place  at  the  head  of  the  younger  art- 
school.  He  is  a  poet  of  inborn  taste,  a  votary  of  the 
beautiful,  and  many  of  his  delicately  conceived  pieces, 
that  are  unexcelled  by  modern  work,  were  composed 
in  a  ruder  time,  and  thus  a  forecast  of  the  present 
technical  advance.  They  illustrate  the  American  in- 
stinct which  unites  a  Saxon  honesty  of  feeling  to  that 
artistic  subtilty  in  which  the  French  surpass  the  world. 
Though  successful  in  a  few  poems  of  a  more  heroic 
cast,  his  essential  skill  and  genius  are  found  in  briefer 
lyrics  comparable  to  faultless  specimens  of  the  an- 
tique graver's  art.  Such  pieces  as  the  "  Palabras 
Carinosas"  and  the  lines  "On  an  Intaglio  Head  of 
Minerva"  have  a  high-bred  quality  that  still  keeps 
them  at  the   head  of   our  vers  de  sociiti ;   nor  is  their 


FAWCETT.  — GILDER.  —  DE  KAY. 


441 


author  dependent  for  his  effect  on  novel  and  elabo- 
rate forms.  Apparently  spontaneous,  they  are  per- 
fected with  the  touch  of  a  Gautier.  His  quatrains 
and  trifles  expressive  of  fleeting  moods  rank  with  the 
best  of  our  time.  Aldrich's  restraint  in  verse  is  a 
notable  contrast  to  the  sudden  wit  and  fancy  of  his 
speech;  as  a  writer,  he  never  has  stood  in  need  of 
the  injunction, — 

"O  Poet,  then  forbear 

The  loosely  sandalled  verse, 
Choose  rather  thou  to  wear 
The  buskin  straight  and  terse." 

His  shorter  tales  and  sketches  are  finished  like  so 
many  poems  in  prose,  sparklingly  original,  and  de- 
lightful for  the  airy  by-play,  the  refined  nuances,  of 
a  captivating  literary  style. 

Fawcett's  verse  displays  tendencies  which  class  him 
with  the  art-school,  and  an  inclination  to  profit  by 
the  Gallic  taste  and  motive.  The  poems  in  his  two 
volumes  are  selected,  I  presume,  from  a  copious  store, 
as  he  has  been  from  youth  a  prolific  writer.  In 
Fantasy  and  Passion  were  many  cabinet  pictures  in 
rhyme,  drawn  with  fastidious  care,  and  an  occasional 
lyric,  like  "The  Meeting,"  upon  a  weird  theme  and 
suggestively  wrought.  The  leading  pieces  in  Song 
and  Story  have  fewer  mannerisms,  —  a  less  fanciful, 
a  freer  and  more  imaginative,  treatment.  Mr.  Faw- 
cett's versatility  leads  him  to  essay  almost  every  form 
of  inventive,  satirical,  and  critical  literature,  and  as 
a  playwright  he  has  made  not  the  least  successful 
of  his  ventures.  Two  of  our  prominent  New  York 
authors  seem,  aside  from  their  professional  work  as 
journalists,  to  have  devoted  themselves  without  re- 
serve to  poetry.      Their   characteristics  are  very  dis- 


Edgar 
Fawcett : 
1847- 


Gildcrand 
deKay. 


442 


LYRIC,  IDYLLIC,   DESCRIPTIVE, 


Richard 

Watson 
Gilder  : 
1844- 


Charles 
de  Kay : 
1849- 


George 

Arnold: 
1834-65. 

John 
Aylmere 
Dorgan : 
1836-67. 

George 
Parsons 
Lathrop  : 
1851- 

Hjalmar 
Hjorth 
Boyesen : 
1848- 


similar.  Gilder,  whose  vein  is  so  unlike  that  of  Mr. 
Aldrich,  vies  with  him  in  artistic  conscientiousness. 
There  is  no  slovenly  work  in  The  New  Day  and  The 
Poet  and  his  Master ;  each  is  a  cluster  of  flawless 
poems,  —  the  earlier  verse  marked  by  the  mystical 
beauty,  intense  emotion,  and  psychological  distinc- 
tions, of  the  select  illuminati.  He  appears  to  have 
studied  closely,  besides  the  most  ideal  English  verse, 
the  Italian  sonnets  and  canzoni  which  ever  deeply 
impress  a  poet  of  exquisite  feeling.  An  individual 
tone  dominates  his  maturer  lyrical  efforts ;  his  aim 
is  choice  and  high,  as  should  be  that  of  one  who 
decides  upon  the  claims  of  others,  and  at  his  age 
there  are  fine  things  left  for  him  to  do.  Charles  de 
Kay  is  also  conspicuous  for  height  of  aim,  and  cer- 
tainly for  a  most  resolute  purpose.  In  these  days 
it  is  bracing  to  see  a  man  of  his  ability  in  earnest 
as  a  poet.  It  would  be  premature  to  judge  of  the 
strange,  affluent,  and  broadly  handled  Visions,  Nim- 
rod  and  Esther,  at  this  near  view,  or  until  completed 
by  the  final  section  of  their  trilogy.  Hesperus  and 
the  Poems  of  Barnaval  show  his  impassioned  and  more 
subjective  moods,  and  his  resources  for  a  prodigal 
display  of  varied,  uneven,  but  often  strongly  effective 
lyrical  work. 

The  deaths  of  Arnold  and  Dorgan,  at  ages  when 
practice-work  ended  and  individual  traits  began  to 
appear,  stilled  two  voices  of  no  little  promise.  Among 
our  Northern  poets  there  are  some  whose  verse  is 
the  expression  of  their  choicest  impulses  rather  than 
the  most  substantial  portion  of  their  literary  outcome. 
Lathrop's  too  infrequent  lyrics  give  token  of  sensi- 
tive feeling  and  a  beautiful  poetic  vein.  Professor 
Boyesen's  verse,  like  his  prose,  belongs  so  thoroughly 
to  his  adopted  language,  and  is  so  fresh  and  classic 


AND  MEDITATIVE    VERSE. 


443 


that  we  scarcely  think  of  him  as  a  Norwegian.  The 
Oriental  songs  of  Edward  King  are  healthy  and  vir- 
ile, and  add  variety  to  our  recent  product.  Sill, 
Benton,  Dr.  Powers,  Weir  Mitchell,  Professor  Beers, 
Riordan,  S.  H.  Thayer,  W.  S.  Shurtleff,  McKay,  Co- 
nant,  Abbey,  Duffield,  Blood,  Proudfit,  Butterworth, 
Saltus,  Tilton,  the  late  Robert  Weeks,  among  our 
writers  of  lyrical  verse,  represent  widely  different 
grades  of  motive  and  execution.  Of  the  late  Henry 
Work,  that  instinctive  composer  of  songs  (and  their 
music)  for  the  people,  I  have  spoken  elsewhere.  Rob- 
ert Grant  has  a  frolic  talent  for  satire,  and  some- 
thing like  that  masterhood  of  current  styles  for  which 
we  still  read  Frere  and  Aytoun.  Houghton's  St. 
Olaf's  Kirk  is  a  good  romantic  poem,  in  the  Ten- 
nysonian  manner,  finished  with  much  care.  Maurice 
Thompson's  Songs  of  Fair  Weather  are  well  named; 
in  breezy,  out-of-door  feeling  he  is  a  kinsman  of 
Walter  Mitchell,  who  wrote  "  Tacking  Ship  off  Shore." 
It  is  chiefly  through  a  close  observation  of  nature 
that  the  influence  of  the  elder  poets,  especially  of 
Emerson,  is  prolonged  by  the  new  choir.  Monte  Rosa, 
Nichols's  long  descriptive  poem,  is  a  not  unworthy 
counterpart  to  The  Brook  —  for  which  the  late  Dr. 
Wright  is  held  in  recollection.  The  transcendental 
instinct,  that  follows  upon  Nature's  elusive  and  spir- 
itual trails,  survives  in  the  thoughtful  lines  of  her 
born  communicant,  John  Albee,  whose  individuality  is 
none  the  less  apparent.  Cheney's  lyrics  of  nature  and 
emotion  have  kindred  yet  distinct  traits.  "  The  Mod- 
ern Job,"  by  Peterson,  is  an  eccentric,  but  original 
and  suggestive  work,  and  there  are  striking  passages 
in  his  minor  poems.  McKnight's  volume  of  sonnets 
on  "  Life  and  Faith "  is  fraught  with  poetic  medita- 
tion.    Montgomery  and   "  Paul   Hermes,"  the   former 


Edward 
King 
184S-     * 

(See  In- 
dex.) 


Robert 
Grant: 
1853- 
George 
Wash- 
ington 
Wright 
Hough- 
ton :  1X50- 

y antes 
Maurice 
Thomp- 
son :  1 844- 
Walter 
Mitchell : 
1826- 
Starr 
Hoyt 
Nichols : 
1834- 
Wright  : 
seep.  52. 

John  Al- 
bee: 1833- 

John 
Vance 
Cheney : 
1848- 

Henry 
Peterson : 
1818- 

George 
Mc- 

Knight  I 
1840- 


444 


FEMALE  POETS. 


George 

Ecigar 
Mout- 
gomery  : 
1S56- 

IVilliam 

Roscoe 

Thayer. 

("  Paul 

Hermes' 

1S59- 


John 

Boyle 
O'Reilly  : 
1844- 

Robert 
Dzvyer 
Joyce : 
1813-83. 

Maurice 
Francis 
Egan  : 
1852- 

(See  In- 
dex.) 

Female 
poets:  see 
f.  50. 


Their  rel- 
ative ex- 
cellence. 


avowedly,  are  inspired  by  the  marvels  of  the  new 
learning,  and  find  no  surer  tonic  for  the  imagination 
than  modern  scientific  discovery.  Emerson's  song 
was  a  verification  of  Wordsworth's  faith  in  the  iden- 
tity of  philosopher  and  poet.  Our  future  imagery 
will  shape  itself  unconsciously,  without  much  need  of 
a  poet's  wilful  effort,  and  will  be  his  adjunct  and  ve- 
hicle rather  than  the  object  of  his  aim.  Montgom- 
ery's command  of  rhythm  is  finely  evident,  and  the 
young  author  of  Hermes  seems  to  have  good  service 
within  his  power. 

Boyle  O'Reilly  attests  his  Irish  blood  by  the  verve 
and  readiness  of  his  ballads.  He  may  be  more  justly 
claimed  as  an  American  than  the  late  Dr.  Joyce, 
whose  Deirdre  fulfilled  the  promise  of  a  bard  who  in 
youth  wrote  the  "Ballads  of  Irish  Chivalry."  Among 
other  and  recent  Celtic  minstrels  of  this  greater  Ire- 
land, besides  Maurice  Egan,  a  sweet  and  true  poet, 
have  been  the  gallant  O'Brien  and  Halpine,  John 
Savage,  McDermott,  —  and  Father  Ryan,  whose  emo- 
tional strains  reach  a  larger  audience  than  that  which 
more  studied  verse  is  wont  to  gain. 

A  Scotch  critic,  whose  resources  as  our  literary 
historian  are  confined  mostly  to  periods  before  the 
civil  war,  repeats  an  old  fling  at  "  the  plague  of  Amer- 
ican poetesses."  This  vieux  gar  (on  of  letters,  if  ac- 
quainted with  their  work,  might  beseech  us,  like  Bene- 
dick, not  to  flout  at  him  for  what  he  had  said  against 
them.  Our  daughters  of  song  outnumber  those  in 
England,  and  some  of  them,  like  some  of  their  breth- 
ren, have  thin  voices ;  but  it  is  just  as  true  that 
much  genuine  poetry  is  composed  by  others,  and  that, 
while  we  have  none  whose  notes  equal  those  of  at 
least  one  Englishwoman,  in  average  merit  they  are 
not   behind   their   fair   rivals.      Their   lyrics,  sonnets, 


A    MARKED  ADVANCE. 


445 


ballads,  are  feminine  and  spontaneous,  and  often 
highly  artistic.  To  be  sure,  our  aspirants  of  either 
sex  are  attempting  few  works  of  invention  \  where  all 
are  sonneteering,  it  is  not  strange  that  women  should 
hold  their  own.  Yet  their  advance  in  discipline  and 
range  is  apparent  also  in  novels  and  other  prose- 
work;  they  know  more  than  of  old,  their  thought  is 
deeper,  their  feeling  more  healthy.  The  morale  of 
their  verse  is  always  elevating;  in  other  respects  it 
fluently  adapts  itself  to  the  conventions  of  the  day. 

Among  these  sweet-voiced  singers,  to  some  of  whom 
I  have  alluded  heretofore,  Miss  Larcom,  with  her  or- 
chard notes,  well  retains  her  popularity.  Mrs.  Cooke 
and  Mrs.  Stoddard  are  too  seldom  heard,  — each  so 
original,  so  true  in  verse  and  prose  to  characteristic 
types.  The  former's  poetry  always  has  been  admired 
for  motive  and  execution  ;  Mrs.  Stoddard's,  though 
less  in  amount,  has  the  condensed  power  and  vivid 
coloring  that  render  it  difficult  to  mistake  the  source 
of  anything  from  her  hand.  The  verse  of  the  brill- 
iant and  devoted  "  H.  H."  (the  sense  of  whose  loss 
is  fresh  upon  us)  is  more  carefully  finished,  though 
perhaps  it  sings  the  less  for  its  union  of  intellectu- 
ality with  a  subtile  feeling  whose  intenseness  is  real- 
ized only  by  degrees.  Her  pieces,  mostly  in  a  single 
key,  and  that  grave  and  earnest,  have  won  the  just 
encomiums  of  select  critics,  but  certainly  lack  the  vari- 
ety of  mood  which  betokens  an  inborn  and  always 
dominant  poetic  faculty.  Mrs.  Spofford's  various  lyrics 
are  rich  in  cadence  ;  she  has  a  fine  choice  of  measures, 
and  always  interests  us  both  with  her  theme  and  its 
treatment.  Her  passion  is  genuine,  and  unusual  re- 
sources of  diction,  color,  effect,  are  brought  to  play 
in  her  poems.  Mrs.  Fields,  the  most  objective  of 
these  writers,  veils   her   personality,   except  as  it  be- 


An  ad- 
vance 
noted. 


Lucy  Lar- 
com. 

Rose  Ter- 
ry Cooke. 

Elizabeth 
Drew 
Barstow 
Stoddard. 


Helen  Ma- 
ria Fiske 
Jackson. 
("H.H.") 


Harriet 
Elizabeth 
Prescott 
Spofford. 


A  nnie 

Adams 

Fields. 


446 


FEMALE  POETS. 


Celia 

Leighton 

Thaxter. 


Mrs. 
Moulton, 
Mrs. 
Dodge, 
Miss  Per- 
ry, and 
others. 
[See  In- 
dex.) 


Sarah 
Morgan 
Bryan 
Piatt. 


Elizabeth 

Stuart 

Phelps. 


[See  In- 
dex.) 


comes  revealed  by  a  free  rhythmical  method,  and  an 
obvious  inclination  toward  the  classical  and  antique. 
The  zest,  the  enchanting  glamour,  of  Northern  coast- 
life  are  known  to  Celia  Thaxter,  our  daughter  of  the 
isles.  Her  sprayey  stanzas  give  us  the  dip  of  the  sea- 
bird's  wing,  the  foam  and  tangle  of  ocean,  varied  in- 
terpretations of  clambering  sunrise  mists  and  even- 
ing's fiery  cloud  above  the  main.  Mrs.  Allen,  Mrs. 
Mapes  Dodge,  Mrs.  Moulton,  Nora  Berry,  Miss  Cool- 
brith  and  Miss  Shinn  of  California,  are  natural  sing- 
ers, in  their  several  degrees.  The  stanzas  of  Mrs. 
Moulton  and  Mrs.  Dodge  are  marked  by  charming 
fancy,  and  always  tender  and  sweet.  Miss  Perry  is 
an  instinctive  melodist,  with  a  sure  ear  for  the  tell- 
ing, original  refrains  that  heighten  the  effect  of  such 
lyrics  as  "  Cressid  "  and  "  Riding  Down." 

Our  best-known  Western  poetess,  Mrs.  Piatt,  though 
often  obscure,  has  traits  resembling  those  of  Miss 
Rossetti,  —  a  vivid  consciousness  of  the  mystery  of 
life  and  death,  a  conjuring  indirectness  of  style,  and 
a  gift,  which  she  shares  with  Mrs.  Dodge,  of  seeing 
into  the  hearts  of  children.  She  will  not,  however,  be 
rightly  measured  by  one  who  reads  the  wrong  volume 
of  her  poems,  or  the  wrong  poem.  Miss  Phelps's 
deeply  religious  nature,  warring  with  its  own  doubts, 
leads  her  on  adventurous  paths.  That  she  is  essen- 
tially a  poet  was  evident  from  her  prose,  long  before 
she  made  a  collection  of  verse.  She  is  the  modern 
vine  from  a  Puritan  stock,  subject  to  inherited  ten- 
dencies, but  yielding  blossoms  of  feminine  grace  and 
aspiration.  The  names  of  the  late  Mrs.  Hudson,  of 
Mrs.  Bradley,  "  Marian  Douglas,"  Mrs.  Sangster,  Miss 
Bushnell,  Miss  Woolsey,  Mrs.  Searing,  Miss  Bates, 
Mrs.  Smith,  Miss  Bloede,  Miss  de  Vere,  Ella  Dietz, 
Miss   Proctor,  Mrs.  Rollins,  Miss   Osgood,  and   Miss 


THEIR   CHARACTERISTICS. 


447 


Cone,  may  be  cited  in  a  list  of  those  whose  songs  are 
pleasantly  familiar.      Miss  Lazarus,  to  whose  transla- 
tions of  Heine  I  have   referred   elsewhere,  is  on   her 
own    ground  in   rendering   the   Hebrew  poets  of   old 
Spain ;  her  minor  pieces  are  written  with  a  firm  hand, 
and   her   tragedy,   The  Dance  of  Death,  is    a  work    of 
much  power.     "  Owen  Innsley  "  has  gained  the  favor 
of  those  who  care  for  poetry  of  an  artistic  type,  and 
Miss  Thomas,  that  delightful  confidante,  yet  betrayer, 
of  the  secrets  of  the   nymphs  and   muses,  has   given 
us  a  volume  of  great  beauty.     The  Songs  and  Lyrics 
of  Miss  Hutchinson,  and  even  more  her  later  pieces, 
striking   for    their    melody,    imagination,    and    unique 
sense  of  design,  assure  us  that  if  she  allots  to  poetry 
the   devotion    that   has    enriched  her   work   in   other 
fields,  its  very  greenest  wreath   is   at   her   command. 
There    are    still    younger   voices    that    give   us   fresh 
music  _  like  Miss  Guiney's,  or,  like  those  of  the  Good- 
ale  sisters,  artless  ditties  of  the  woods  and  fields,  and 
from  which    maturer    notes    are    not    unlikely  to    be 

heard. 

In  the  South,  we  have  Mrs.  Preston's  works,  of  an 
ambitious  cast  and  strengthened  by  dramatic  pur- 
pose and  expression.  Like  Mrs.  Webster  in  England, 
she  may  be  called  a  pupil  of  Browning.  Local  color, 
and  much  suggestion  of  the  far  Southern  atmosphere 
and  sentiment,  are  found  in  the  volumes  of  Mrs. 
Townsend,  of  Louisiana. 

These  poets  mostly  sing  for  expression's  sake,  and 
therefore  without  affectation.  They  often  excel  the 
sterner  sex  in  perception  of  the  finer  details  of  life 
and  nature.  The  critic  would  be  a  renegade  who, 
after  paying  his  tribute  to  feminine  genius  in  England, 
should  not  recognize  with  satisfaction  what  has  been 
achieved  by  his  own  countrywomen.     They  have  their 


Emma 
Lazarus. 


Lucy 

White 
Jennison. 

Edith  Ma- 
tilda 
Thomas. 

Ellen 
Mackay 
Hutchin- 
son. 


Margaret 

Junkin 

Preston. 


Mary  A  sh- 
ley  Town- 
send. 
("Xarif- 


/«■") 


448 


RECENT  PHASES. 


A  rcadian 
diversions. 


"With 
pipe  and 
flute." 


{See  In- 
dex.) 


H.  C.  Bun- 
Her. 


shortcomings,  not  the  least  of  which  in  some  of  them 
is  that  even  perfection  which  is  in  itself  a  fault ;  but 
a  general  advance  is  just  as  evident  in  their  poetry 
as  in  the  prose  fiction  for  which  they  now  are  held  in 
honor  throughout  the  English-speaking  world. 

A  phase  of  our  verse,  illustrating  its  present  station, 
reflects  the  new  London  vogue,  and  has  been  men- 
tioned in  comparison  with  Dr.  Holmes's  lighter  vein. 
I  refer  to  the  plenitude  of  metrical  trifles,  society- 
verse,  belles  choses  in  the  French  forms  that  are  so 
taking.  Various  new-comers  make  their  entrance  ac- 
cordingly ;  scarcely  one  but  turns  you  off  his  rondeau 
or  ballade,  and  very  cleverly  withal.  Blithe  measures 
written  gracefully,  like  those  of  Sherman,  Minturn 
Peck,  etc.,  are  more  agreeable  than  the  prentice-work 
of  sentimentalists.  A  sprightly  Mercutio  is  better 
company  than  your  juvenile  Harold  or  Werter.  They 
serve  very  well,  moreover,  for  the  travesties  and  "  sat- 
ire harming  not "  of  the  boulevard  press.  Our  young 
collegians,  of  whom  Loring,  who  died  in  his  adven- 
turous youth,  was  the  precursor,  are  apt  at  such 
devices.  It  is  curious  to  receive  rhymes  of  the  same 
kind  from  Cambridge,  Massachusetts,  and  Cambridge, 
England.  Mr.  Scollard's  are  just  as  well  turned  as 
Mr.  Ropes's,  and  are  not  without  signs  of  good  omen. 
The  line  of  advance  has  been  exemplified  by  a  poet 
who  began  in  this  way,  the  author  of  Airs  from  Ar- 
cady.  Bunner's  verse,  whether  of  the  gayer  kind,  or 
rising  to  the  merit  of  his  more  ideal  lyrics  and  son^ 
nets,  is  a  hopeful  inscription  at  the  parting  of  the 
ways.  It  already  commends  itself  to  those  who  look 
for  feeling  under  grace,  and  shows  that  he  now  can 
make  his  standing  with  the  muse  depend  upon  the 
constancy  of  his  devotion. 

Before  discussing  further  the  latest  tendencies,  let 


THE  SOUTH. 


449 


us  see  what  is  doing  in  those  precincts  to  which  we 
naturally  turn  for  literature  of  a  specific  flavor.  The 
South,  once  so  ambitious,  has  been  very  barren  of 
poetry  during  the  last  thirty  years,  either  mindful  of 
Poe's  conviction  that  there  was  no  equal  chance  for 
her  native  writers,  or  feeling  that  they  were  too  remote 
from  the  world  to  keep  up  with  its  progressive  changes 
I  think  that  standard  literature,  including  poetry,  is 
read  with  more  interest  in  the  South  than  here,  and 
oratory  there  is  still  more  than  a  tradition.  But  the 
South  has  been  unfortunate  in  the  loss  of  promising 
writers.  One  such  was  Timrod,  whose  handiwork  was 
skilful  and  often  imaginative  and  strong.  Timrod's 
"  Cotton  Boll "  was  a  forerunner  of  the  method  of  a 
still  finer  poet  than  he,  whose  career  was  equally  pa- 
thetic. The  name  of  Sidney  Lanier  brings  him  clearly 
to  recollection  —  as  I  saw  him  more  than  once  in  the 
study  of  our  lamented  Deukalion  j  the  host  so  buoyant 
and  sympathetic ;  the  Southerner  nervous  and  eager, 
with  dark  hair  and  silken  beard,  features  delicately 
moulded,  pallid  complexion,  hands  of  the  slender, 
white,  artistic  type.  The  final  collection  of  his  writ- 
ings, with  an  adequate  and  feeling  memoir  by  Dr. 
Ward,  confirms  me  in  an  already  expressed  belief  that 
Lanier's  difficulties  were  explained  by  the  very  traits 
which  made  his  genius  unique.  His  musical  faculty 
was  compulsive ;  it  inclined  him  to  override  Lessing's 
law  of  the  distinctions  of  art,  and  to  essay  in  language 
feats  that  only  the  gamut  can  render  possible.  For 
all  this,  one  now  sees  clearly  that  he  was  a  poet,  and 
bent  upon  no  middle  flight.  He  magnified  his  office, 
and  took  a  prophetic  view  of  its  restored  supremacy. 
The  juvenile  pieces  here  first  brought  together,  al- 
though his  biographer  apologizes  for  them,  have  little 
in  common  with  ordinary  verse  of  the  time.  "Nir- 
29 


The  South. 


Henry 

Timrod: 

1829-67. 


Sidney 
Lanier  : 
1842-81. 


His  col- 
lected 
"Poems,1 
1884. 


Lessing's 
"  Laoc- 


Lanier's 
early  and 
sponta- 
neous vein. 


45° 


SIDNEY  LANIER. 


His 

■maturer 
work  ;  its 
theory. 


Symphonic 
composi- 
tions. 


Their 
merit  and 
their      . 
failing. 


vana,"     "Resurrection,"    and    the    songs    for    "The 
Jacquerie,"  are  such  as  herald  a  new  voice ;  and  later 
efforts  of  the  kind  also  show  his  gift  unadulterated  by 
meditations  on  rhythmical  structure.     Among  these  are 
the  "  Song  of  the  Chattahoochee,"  almost  as  haunting 
as    "Ulalume,"    "The    Revenge    of    Hamish,"  — than 
which  there  are  few  stronger  ballads,  —  "  The  Mocking 
Bird,"  "Tampa  Robins,"    "The  Stirrup-Cup,"   "The 
Bee,"  and  "The   Ship   of   Earth."     But   turn   to    the 
productions  which  he  deemed  far  more  significant,  in 
view  of  their  composition  upon  a  new  and  symphonic 
method.     In  time  he  doubtless   might   have   wrought 
out  something   to  which  these  would   seem   but  pre- 
liminary  experiments.     The   Centennial    cantata   was 
written    to    be  sung,   and  when    rendered  ,  accordingly 
no  longer  appeared  grotesque.     We  may  surmise  that 
the  adaptation  not  of  melody  alone,  but  also  of  har- 
mony and  counterpoint,  to  the  uses  of  the  poet,  was 
Lanier's  ultimate  design.     Nor  is  it   safe    to   gainsay 
the  belief  that  he  would  have  accomplished  this  more 
nearly,  but  for  his  early  death  and  the  hindrances  of 
sickness    and    embarrassment    that    long   preceded   it. 
Compositions    suggestive    and    reverberant    as    "  Sun- 
rise "  and  "  The  Marshes   of   Glynn  "   go   far  toward 
vindicating  his  method.     Yet  even  in  these  there  is  a 
surplusage,    and    an   occasional   failure   to   make   not 
only  outlines  but  impressions  decidedly  clear.     "The 
Symphony,"  "  Corn,"  and  other  over-praised  ventures 
on  the  same  plan,  seem  to  me  nebulous,    and   often 
mere  recitative.     The  danger  of  too  curious   specula- 
tion   is   suggested   by  the   strained   effect   of   several 
ambitious  failures,  contrasted  with  the   beauty  of   his 
unstudied  work.     An   old  foe,    didacticism,    creeps  in 
by   stealth   when    work   upon  a  theoretical    system    is 
attempted.     Let  critics  deduce    what  laws   they  may; 


PROMISE   OF  THE  SOUTH  AND    WEST. 


45* 


it  is  not  for  the  poet  deliberately  to  set  about  illus- 
trating them.  The  formulas  devised  by  Poe  and  others 
often  are  found  to  suit,  designedly  or  not,  their  inven- 
tor's personal  capabilities.  Lanier's  movement  to  en- 
large the  scope  of  verse  was  directly  in  the  line  of 
his  own  endowment;  he  has  left  hints  for  successors 
who  may  avoid  his  chief  mistake — that  of  wandering 
along  in  improvisation  like  some  facile,  dreamy  master 
of  the  key-board.  That  remarkable  piece  of  analysis, 
The  Science  of  English  Verse,  serves  little  purpose  ex- 
cept, like  Coleridge's  metaphysics,  to  give  us  further 
respect  for  its  author's  intellectual  powers. 

Hayne's  vitality,  courage,  and  native  lyrical  impulse 
have  kept  him  in  voice,  and  his  people  regard  him 
with  a  tenderness  which,  if  a  commensurate  largesse 
were  added,  should  make  him  feel  less  solitary  among 
his  pines.  Various  Southern  poets,  —  Cooke,  Randall, 
Burns  Wilson  of  Kentucky,  Boner,  and  others,  open 
vistas  of  the  life  and  spirit  of  their  region.  Town- 
send's  ballads,  in  their  sturdy,  careless  way,  speak  for 
the  poetic  side  of  a  peculiarly  American  writer,  true 
to  memories  of  a  boyhood  on  the  "  Eastern  Shore." 
His  tales,  and  the  strongly  dramatic  fiction  of  Cable, 
Miss  Murfree,  Page,  Johnston,  etc.,  more  clearly  be- 
token the  revived  imagination  of  a  glowing  clime. 
The  great  heart  of  the  generous  and  lonely  South,  too 
long  restrained,  —  of  the  South  once  so  prodigal  of 
romance,  eloquence,  gallant  aspiration,  —  once  more 
has  found  expression.  It  enables  us  to  know  it,  hav- 
ing begun  at  last  to  comprehend  its  true  self. 

That  the  public  is  always  on  the  alert  for  what  is 
both  good  and  novel  was  illustrated  by  Bret  Harte's 
leap  into  favor  with  his  portraitures  of  a  new  and 
scenic  world.  His  prose  idyls  of  the  camp  and  coast, 
even   more  than  his  ballads,  were  the  vouchers   of  a 


"The 

Science  of      J  \ 

English  \ 

Verse,"         ' 
1880. 

Paul 
Hamilton 
Hayne  : 
1831- 


James 
Ryder 
Randall: 
1839- 

George 
Alfred 
Town- 
send: 
1841- 


Promise  of 
the  South. 


The  Pa- 
cific Slofe. 

Francis 
Bret 
Harte  : 
1837- 


452 


HARTE.  —  MILLER. 


Cincinna- 
tus  Hirur 
{Joaquiti) 
Miller  : 
1841- 


Charles 
Warren 
Stoddard : 
1840- 

Charles 
Henry 
Phelps  : 
1853- 


poet ;  familiar  as  the  verse  at  once  became,  it  is  far 
less  creative  than  the  stories.     The  serious  portion  of 
it,  excepting  a  few  dialect  pieces,  —  "Jim,"  "In  the 
Tunnel,"  etc.,  —  is  much  like  the  verse  of  Longfellow, 
Whittier,    and  Taylor;  the   humorous   poems,   though 
never  wanting  in  some  touch  of  nature,  are  apt  to  be 
what  we  do  not  recognize  as  American.     But  of  either 
class  it  may  be  said  that  it  is,  like  the  rhyming  of  his 
master,   Thackeray,   the    overflow   of   a    rare    genius, 
whose  work  must  be  counted  among  the  treasures  of 
the  language.     Mr.  Harte  may  be  termed  the  founder, 
and  thus  far  has  been  the  most  brilliant  exemplar,  of 
our  transcontinental  school.      Joaquin  Miller  is,   first 
of   all,   a   poet,   if  one  may  judge   from   the   relative 
merits  of  his  verse    and   prose,  —  the  latter  of  which 
does  not  show  his  spirit  and  invention  at  their  best. 
The  Songs   of  the  Sierras,    as    a   first   book,    was    no 
ordinary  production.     Its  metrical  romances,  notwith- 
standing  obvious   crudities    and   affectations,   gave    a 
pleasurable  thrill  to  the  reader.     Here  was  something 
like   the  Byronic   imagination,  set   aglow  by  the  free- 
dom and  splendor  of  the  Western  ranges,  or  by  turns 
creating  with  at  least  a  sensuous  vraisemblance  an  ideal 
of  the  tropics  which  so  many  Northern  minstrels  have 
dreamed  of  and  sung.     Miller  still   has  years   before 
him,  and  often  lyrics  from  his  pen  suggest  that,  if  he 
would   add  a   reasonable  modicum  of  purpose  to  his 
sense  of  the  beautiful,  the  world  would  profit  by  the 
result.     Among  other  poets  of  the  Pacific  Slope,  War- 
ren Stoddard    and    Phelps   seem   more   indifferent  to 
local  flavor,  and  refine  their  work  in  the  usual  manner 
of  the  Eastern  school. 

Surveying  the  broad  central  region  of  tilth  and 
traffic  between  the  Mississippi  River  and  the  Appa- 
lachian Range, —  the  most  fertile  land  on  earth,  and 


PI  A  TT.  -  HA  V. 


453 


tenanted  by  a  people  whose  average  culture  exceeds 
that  of  any  race  numerically  equal,  —  we  find  it  sensi- 
tive to  music  and  art,  but  not  yet  fruitful  of  that 
poesy  which,  as  Sidney  declared,  alone  can  outvie 
nature,  and  "make  the  too-much-loved  earth  more 
lovely."  The  Ohio  valley  lost  two  poets,  —  one  in 
battle,  the  other  after  he  had  lived  to  write  our  most 
effective  ballad  of  the  war,  — Lytle  and  Forceythe 
Willson,  each  of  whom  had  unquestionable  lyrical 
talent.  John  Piatt,  the  laureate  of  prairie  and  home- 
stead life,  has  won  a  just  reputation  for  his  reflective 
and  idyllic  verse.  He  has  a  Wordsworthian  sympathy 
with  nature,  and  knowledge  of  its  forms,  and  a  sincere 
purpose.  He  transmits  with  much  simplicity  the  air 
and  bloom  of  the  prairie,  the  fire-light  in  the  settler's 
home,  and  the  human  endeavor  of  the  great  inland 
States  he  knows  so  well.  Will  Carleton  struck  a  nat- 
ural vein  by  instinct,  in  his  farm-ballads,  and  has  been 
rewarded  for  the  tenacity  with  which  he  has  pursued 
it.  Others,  like  Venable  and  Harney,  find  their  way 
to  the  households  of  a  rural  constituency ;  they  have 
the  merit  of  presenting  that  to  which  they  are  wonted 
—  they  know  whereof  they  affirm. 

John  Hay,  whose  writings  are  at  once  fine  and 
strong,  has  been  so  engrossed  by  a  rare  experience 
of  "  cities,  .  .  .  councils,  governments,"  as  scarcely  to 
have  done  full  justice  to  his  sterling  gifts.  With  his 
taste,  mental  vigor,  and  mastery  of  style,  he  may  well 
be  taken  to  task  for  neglecting  a  faculty  exception- 
ally his  own.  The  uncompromising  dialect-pieces, 
which  made  a  hit  as  easily  as  they  were  thrown  off, 
are  the  mere  excess  of  his  pathos  and  humor.  Such 
poetry  as  the  blank-verse  impromptu  on  Liberty  shows 
the  higher  worth  of  a  man  who  should  rise  above 
indifference,  and  the  hindrance  of  his  mood,  and  in 


The 

Inland 

States. 


Lytle  and 
Willson. 
(See 
Index.) 


John 
James 
Piatt : 
i835- 


William 

Carleton  i 

1845- 

William 

Henry 

Venable  : 

183&- 

William 
Wallace 
Harney  : 
831- 


John 
Hay: 
1838- 


454 


IDYLS.  —  DRAMAS.  —  TRANS  LA  TIONS. 


"Scholar 
Gypsies.'''' 


Denton 
Jacqttes 
Snider  : 
1841- 


William 

Leighton: 

i833- 


William 
Young- : 

1S47- 

Recent 

tra?isla- 

tors. 


See  p.  55. 


(See 
hidex.) 


these  spiritless  times  take  up  the  lyre  again,  nor  fit- 
fully touch  the  strings. 

In  places  remote  from  the  literary  market,  we  often 
discover  signs  of  hopeful  energy.      The  best  models 
are   read   by  isolated   poets,  whose   seclusion   the  ca- 
pricious standards  of   the  town   oracles  fail   to  influ- 
ence.    Snider's   Delphic  Days,  for  example,  a  charm- 
ing idyl   in   the   elegiac   distich,   was   printed    in   St. 
Louis,   through   a   singular   coincidence,   at  the   same 
date  with    Munby's    "  Dorothy "    in    England,  —  the 
two  being  the  only  prolonged  specimens  of  this  meas- 
ure,   if    I   mistake    not,  which   our   language    affords. 
Agamemnon's  Daughter,  by  the  same  hand,  is  another 
contrast   to   the   bounds   of   every-day   song.      Leigh- 
ton's  legendary  dramas,   The  Sons  of  Godwin  and  At 
the  Court  of  King  Edwin,  are  creditable  to  our  liter- 
ature.     Their   romantic   themes,   by  inheritance    and 
the  liberties  of  art,  plainly  are  within  the  usufruct  of 
an  American  poet.      A  drama  of   like  cast,  and  suc- 
cessfully adapted  to  the  stage,  is  Pendragon,  the  work 
of  an  Illinoisian,  William  Young. 

The   department   of   translation,  which  (as  well   as 
that  of  devotional  verse)  has  been  noted  in  a  former 
chapter,   is    at    present   somewhat   neglected,    though 
there   are   minor  contributions   by  Lea,   F.   Peterson, 
Mrs.  Conant,  and  others.    Perhaps  the  most  suggestive 
of   the   late    efforts   in   this   field    are    Miss    Preston's 
charming    translations   from    the    Provencal    and   her 
version  of  the  Georgics.      Howland's   ^Eneid  is  rude 
and  elegant   by  turns,  but   of   interest   to    those  who 
believe  with  me  that  the  English   accentuate  hexam- 
eter is  on   the  whole   our  best   instrument  for  literal 
and  lineal   rendering  of   the  classical   measure.     The 
translation   of   Virgil's   complete  works,  by  Wilstach, 
is   more   elaborate.      It  is   written   in   flexible  blank- 


DIALECT  VERSE,  ETC. 


455 


verse,  and  garnished  with  copious  notes  and  a  review 
of  former  English  versions.  This  student,  who  does 
not  lack  temerity,  is  translating  "The  Divine  Comedy," 
upon  a  metrical  system  hitherto  unessayed. 

Few  dialects  of   our  tongue,  except  those  of   Scot- 
land, Lancashire,   and  Dorset,  have   been  more  clev- 
erly handled  for   metrical   effect   than   those    peculiar 
to   the   United    States.     The    Atlantic  varieties   have 
been  used   to   good   purpose,  as  we  have  seen,  from 
the   time  of   Fessenden's   "  Country  Lovers  "  to   that 
wherein   are   recorded    the    exploits    of    Hans    Breit- 
mann.    Harte's  and  Hay's  successes  in  a  correspond- 
ing line   increased   the   popular  regard  for  their   bet- 
ter work.     Riley's  Hoosier  lyrics  often  are  more  terse 
and  pointed  than   the  numerous  ballads  of  Carleton. 
Some  of   the  most  attractive  and   piquant  of  Ameri- 
can   folk-songs    are   in    the    dialect   of    our   African 
population,  North   and    South.      Stephen    Foster,  the 
pioneer  of  "minstrel"  song-writers,  whose  touching  or 
humorous  ditties  were  wedded  to  genuine  melody,  de- 
serves  remembrance.      A   group,  with   the   author   of 
"Uncle    Remus"    included,  has   diligently   cultivated 
the    art  of  writing   plantation  -  verse.      Mrs.  Preston, 
Sidney   and   Clifford   Lanier,  the   late   Mrs.  McDow- 
ell   and   Irwin    Russell,    Miss    McLean,    Macon,    and 
many  others,  have  contributed  to  this   quaint  anthol- 
ogy    which  — at     its     extremes     of     humor,     as     in 
"  Reb'rend  Quacko  Strong,"  or  of  melody  and  devo- 
tional  pathos,  as   in    "De    Sheepfol'"  -  certainly   is 
an  original  outgrowth  of  the  cisatlantic  muse. 

III. 

Such   is    a   fairly   representative   list   of   those    to 
whom  our  recent   poetry  owes   its  being.     A  protest 


Dialect- 
verse. 


Seep.  59, 
and  cp. 
"Victo- 
rian 
Poets  "  : 
pp.  278, 
279. 


James 
Whitcomb 
Riley  : 
i854- 

Seep.  49. 

Plan- 
tation 
lyrics. 


Joel 

Chandler 
Harris  : 
1848- 


Irvoin 
Russell: 
1853-79- 
{A  nd  see 
Index.) 


The  fore- 
going a 


456 


IMPRESSIONS  LEFT  BY  THIS  SURVEY. 


represen- 
tative list. 


Cfi.  "Vic- 
torian 
Poets  "  : 
fp.  290, 
291. 


Traits.,  as 
compared 
with  those 
of  the  gen- 
eral choir 
abroad. 


Question 
as  to  the 
relative 
importance 
of  our  lat- 
ter-day 
song, 


against  so  free  a  range  of  selection  may  be  entered 
by  some,  who  fail  to  consider  that  for  each  name 
here  found  a  score  of  others  could  be  cited.  Doubt- 
less many  of  the  latter  have  equal  claims  to  notice, 
this  summary  having  been  made  with  no  design  of 
completeness,  but  as  a  sufficient  basis  for  remarks 
on  the  weakness,  quite  as  much  as  on  the  strength, 
of  our  present  movement,  and  on  the  chances  of  the 
near  future. 

At  the  outset  it  can  be  honestly  asserted,  in  be- 
half of  the  writers  named,  that  as  a  whole  they  do 
not  show  less  favorably  than  the  corresponding  mod- 
ern choir  of  Great  Britain.  It  would  be  difficult  to 
assort  them  in  groups  such  as  we  have  observed 
abroad;  apart  from  local  differences  of  style  they 
bear  an  almost  monotonous  relationship  to  one  an- 
other. This  common  likeness,  however,  is  an  illusive 
something  which  renders  their  productions  American. 
If  their  verse  presents  few  absolutely  novel  types,  it 
is  more  charged  with  national  sentiment  than  that  of 
the  late  English  poets.  It  pays  little  regard  to 
pseudo  -  classicism,  middle -age  restorations,  and  to 
themes  borrowed  from  other  lands  and  languages. 
It  is  sincere  and  impulsive,  and  has  a  New  World 
mode  of  looking  at  things  and  considering  them. 
Finally,  the  work  of  the  most  expert  among  these 
writers,  both  sexes  included,  is  often  as  interesting 
for  technical  merit  as  that  of  their  distant  compeers, 
although  it  may  be  that  we  have  fewer  in  number 
who  reach  a  faultless  standard. 

Granting  or  claiming  thus  much,  a  reviewer  must 
put  the  question  directly  to  his  conscience  —  How 
does  the  most  of  this  recent  verse  impress  you  ? 
Upon  the  foregoing  summary,  what  can  one  honestl\ 
declare  of   its   force   and  significance  ?      Its   achieve- 


AN  INTERREGNUM. 


457 


ments  have  been  noted  j  the  side  on  which  it  is  triv- 
ial or  deficient  must  be  as  plainly  shown,  lest  the 
narrator  be  forced  hereafter  to  regret  that  he  with- 
held his  convictions.  Nor  is  it  easy  to  gloss  over 
the  dynamic  insufficiency  of  our  present  metrical  lit- 
erature. The  belief  scarcely  can  be  resisted  that 
there  is,  if  not  a  decadence,  at  least  a  poetic  inter- 
regnum, as  compared  with  the  past  and  measuring 
our  advance  in  sundry  fields  of  activity.  As  I  have 
said,  the  first  influence  is  ended ;  there  is  a  pause 
before  the  start  and  triumph  of  another.  This  may 
be  frankly  acknowledged ;  in  fact,  the  situation  is 
merely  correlative  with  that  observed,  ten  years  ago, 
in  our  look  across  the  sea.  It  is  none  the  less  one 
on  which  neither  our  poets  nor  their  countrymen 
have  much  reason  to  plume  themselves.  If  our  poe- 
try, since  the  time  of  Longfellow,  has  not  kept  pace 
with  our  general  movement,  this  of  itself  implies  an 
interregnum.  I  suspect  that  it  is  of  less  relative  im- 
portance than  if  it  had  held  the  point  already  gained. 
Its  new  leaders,  at  all  events,  are  not  invested  with 
the  authority  of  those  to  whom  these  essays  chiefly 
have  been  devoted.  Their  volumes  scarcely  receive 
the  welcome  —  nor  have  they  the  bearing  and  import 
as  an  indispensable  part  of  literature  —  that  apper- 
tained to  the  poems  of  "The  Seaside  and  the  Fire- 
side," "  Evangeline,"  the  "  Voices  of  Freedom," 
"Snow-Bound,"  "The  Biglow  Papers,"  "Under  the 
Willows,"  "Poems  of  the  Orient,"  and  the  "Poems" 
of  the  Concord  sage.  To  the  careful  eye  they  seem 
less  suggestive  of  changes  and  results  than  were 
"  The  Raven  and  other  Poems,"  "  Songs  of  Sum- 
mer," and  "  Leaves  of  Grass."  They  do  not,  like 
some  of  the  books  here  named,  supply  either  lay  or 
professional   classes  with   the   most   essential   portion 


Measured 
by  that 
which  we 
have  been 
consider- 
ing. 


458 


DEFICIENT  PURPOSE  AND  IDEALITY. 


Our  mod- 
ern poets. 


One/eat- 
ure. 


Spirit  of 
the  new 
school. 


of  their  reading.  We  see  that  this  is  partly  due  to 
conditions  which  it  is  just  as  well  should  obtain  for 
a  season,  and  which  the  poets  are  not  able  to  avert. 
Before  recurring  to  this  difficulty,  let  us  see  how  far 
they  are  their  own  bafflers  and  justly  to  be  held  re- 
sponsible. 

Some  of  them  have  given  such  evidence  of  the 
faculty  divine  as  to  be  sure  of  enrolment  in  the  Par- 
nassian registry.  Others  have  composed  charming 
bits  of  verse, — pledges,  as  yet  unfulfilled,  of  some- 
thing larger  and  more  creative.  We  do  not  ask  for 
masterpieces,  but  how  few  the  recent  poems  which 
approach  in  breadth  and  interest  those  of  the  vet- 
eran school !  Do  our  poets  really  trust  their  call- 
ing, in  defiance  of  temporal  conditions,  however  dis- 
couraging ?  Do  they  not  share  in  a  measure  the 
sentiment  which  regards  ideality  as  an  amiable  weak- 
ness, the  relic  of  a  Quixotic  period,  and  thus  feel 
half-ashamed  of  their  birthright?  Few  of  them,  at 
the  best,  cultivate  the  latter  seriously,  as  their  avowed 
means  of  expression  j  and  of  these  few  the  majority 
perhaps  are  women.  There  are  some  who  will  be 
ungracious  enough  to  say  that  a  time  when  religion 
and  poesy  are  sustained  by  the  graceful,  devoted, 
but  distinctly  minor  services  of  women,  is  not  one 
of  supremacy  for  either  the  pulpit  or  the  lyre.  Those 
who  demur  to  this,  and  who  refer  to  the  authors  of 
the  "  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese  "  and  "  Romola," 
will  be  told  that  Mrs.  Browning  and  George  Eliot 
were  forerunners,  not  exemplars,  of  a  golden  era 
when  it  shall  be  no  longer  true. 

Even  if  our  poets  are  doing  the  best  within  their 
power,  their  misconception  of  relative  values  is  much 
the  same  as  that  recently  noted  of  the  minor  English 
school.     To  our  predecessors  the  spirit  of  a  work  was 


O  VER-REFINEMENT. 


459 


all  in  all ;  the  form  was  often  marred  by  careless  exe- 
cution. It  took  years  of  Keats,  Tennyson,  and  the 
study  of  their  masters,  to  rectify  this,  and  then  the 
drift  set  quite  too  far  in  an  opposite  direction  ;  until 
at  last  a  Neo-Romantic  group  wreaked  its  thoughts 
upon  details  of  sound  and  color,  placed  decoration 
above  construction,  the  form  of  verse  above  its  motive, 
—  thus  missing  the  impulsive  cadence,  the  more  ethe- 
real structure,  to  which  the  evasive  spirit  of  poetry 
mysteriously  inclines.  Heine's  assertion,  that  a  poet 
must  have  natural  tones  in  his  lyrics  and  characters 
in  his  narrative  or  dramatic  efforts,  was  sustained  by 
the  impotency  of  our  own  verse-makers  before  the 
time  of  Whittier  and  Longfellow.  With  them  and 
their  comrades  American  poetry  took  on  at  least  the 
merit  of  being  natural,  and  gained  a  foothold ;  but 
this  merit  is  less  apparent  in  our  later  verse,  whose 
forms,  though  neatly  mastered,  breed  a  temper  as  ar- 
tificial as  their  own.  In  brief,  our  lyrics  of  the  past 
had  the  virtue  of  simplicity,  but  were  less  noteworthy 
for  imagination ;  those  which  have  succeeded  them 
fail  equally  in  poetry's  highest  attribute,  and  their 
interest  is  due  less  to  simplicity  than  to  art  —  the  art 
which,  being  a  substitute  for  imaginative  vitality,  runs 
into  artifices  and  mere  technique.  Over-refinement, 
through  a  strict  interpretation  of  that  excellent  canon, 
"  Art  for  Art's  sake,"  is  a  vice  of  the  period.  Art  is  a 
language,  and  a  seemingly  careless  workman  may  be 
a  truer  artist  than  his  painstaking  fellow.  When  one 
has  little  to  say,  his  technics  are  a  kind  of  pedantry, 
while  a  faulty  poem  or  picture  may  be  great  because  a 
great  thought  or  character  is  in  it.  The  best  workman 
is  he  who  adapts  means  to  the  noblest  end,  and  we 
tire  of  those  who,  with  no  message  to  deliver,  elaborate 
their  style.     The  oldest  races  have  discovered  that  no 


Cp."  Vic- 
torian 
Poets  "  .• 
pp.  284-6, 
289. 


Simplicity 
and  arti- 
fice 


A  rt  win* 

by  expres- 
sion,   cp. 
"Victo- 
rian 
Poets  "  .• 
p.  288. 


460 


ABUNDANT  MINOR    VERSE. 


Passing 
vogues. 


"The  ac- 
complish- 
ment of 
verse." 


Half- 
efforts. 


labor  is  artistic,  unless  strictly  to  the  purpose ;  a  few 
sure  lines,  and  the  result  may  be  attained.  We  see, 
however,  that  technical  experts,  though  devoid  of 
imagination,  often  have  a  sudden  following  among 
new  men.  This  is  because  their  skill  is  addressed  to 
the  profession  rather  than  to  the  public,  and  also, 
because  the  young  recognize  the  dexterity  which  they 
must  acquire,  while  the  creative  genius  of  true  masters 
as  yet  escapes  them.  Hence  the  instant  vogue  of 
novel  forms,  requiring  adroitness  for  their  perfection, 
and  so  elegant  as  to  conciliate  even  those  they  do 
not  capture.  When  real  additions  to  our  English 
method,  they  will  bear  use  and  reproduction.  But, 
after  a  few  men  of  exquisite  talents  have  employed 
them  to  advantage,  the  public  grows  weary  of  modes 
so  peculiar  that  we  are  compelled  to  dwell  upon  the 
form  and  not  the  thought. 

Thus  we  have  in  view,  if  not  precisely  a  mob  of 
gentlemen  who  write  with  ease,  an  increased  number 
of  those  writing  with  the  profusion  of  ease  and  the 
pain  of  curious  labor,  and  often  at  a  loss  of  individual 
distinction.  Lyrics,  sonnets,  canzonets,  are  produced 
on  every  hand.  The  average  is  so  good  that,  despite 
the  beauty  of  an  occasional  piece,  few  can  be  said  to 
stand  out  boldly  from  the  rest.  Considering  the  ac- 
cumulated wealth  of  English  poetry,  it  is  questionable 
whether  more  sonnets,  etc.,  are  a  real  addition  to  it, 
and  if  a  place  worth  having  can  be  earned  by  polish- 
ing the  countless  facets  of  gems  dependent  on  the 
fanciful  analysis  of  love  and  other  emotions.  Again, 
some  of  our  poets,  like  certain  painters,  avoid  con- 
tinued effort,  and  satisfy  themselves  with  sketch-work 
—  a  facile  way  of  keeping  up  expectation.  Having 
mastered  one's  vocation,  why  not  practice  it  with  a 
determined  hand  ?     Too  much  assurance  was  the  fault 


DIVISION  OF  EFFORT. 


461 


of  our  earlier  period,  but  the  ambition  that  went  with 
it  stimulated  a  few  to  real  achievements.  It  is  hard 
to  account  for  our  easy  modern  contentment.  In  older 
countries  the  mines  have  been  so  well  worked  that 
there  is  an  excuse  for  resorting  to  the  "  tailings,"  but 
here  there  should  be  the  broadest  encouragement  for 
prospectors.  No  doubt  our  reaction  from  the  old- 
fashioned  conceit  has  its  effect  on  able  men,  and 
makes  them  cleave  to  ground  of  which  they  have  no 
fear.  Too  much  credit  is  awarded  now  to  the  knowl- 
edge of  one's  limitations.  A  poet,  most  of  all,  should 
not  believe  in  limitations ;  by  ignoring  them,  a  few 
will  reach  the  heights.  But  our  aspirants  seem  to 
feel  that  nothing  better  can  be  done  than  to  amuse 
readers  who  consider  poetry  a  diversion,  and  they 
either  fear  to  put  their  fate  to  the  touch  "  to  gain  or 
lose  it  all,"  or  utterly  fail  to  realize  the  chance  at 
this  moment  existing.  And  so,  if  poetry  has  lost  its 
hold,  it  is  in  some  degree  because  no  brilliant  leader 
compels  attention  to  it,  devoting  himself  to  the  hazard 
of  arduous  and  bravely  ventured  song. 

The  time,  then,  is  not  one  of  transition,  save  in  the 
sense  that  all  periods  are  transitional.  It  is  inter- 
calary, yet  as  well  defined  as  the  middle  ring  of  Sat- 
urn, gaining  its  light  and  substance  from  a  multitude 
of  little  quantities,  —  notable,  in  fact,  for  the  profusion 
and  excellence  of  its  minor  verse.  And  here  it  must 
be  borne  in  mind  that  not  a  few  of  our  idealists  are 
directing  their  main  efforts  to  prose  composition.  For 
example,  one  of  the  finest  elegiac  poems  of  recent 
years,  The  North  Shore  Watch,  is  privately  printed  by 
Mr.  Woodberry,  who  thus  far  has  permitted  the  ordi- 
nary reader  to  know  him  only  as  a  biographer  and 
critical  essayist.  Among  the  chief  Victorian  writers, 
we  found  but  two  or  three  that  might  be  classified  as 


''I/thy 
heart  fail 
thee,  climb 
not  at  all." 


Profusion 
of  minor 
verse. 


Ideality 
diverted 
to  prose 
composi- 
tion. 

"The 
North 
Shore 
Watch." 

George 
Edward 
Wood- 
berry: 
1855- 


462 


POET-NO  VELISTS. 


Novelist- 
poets,  etc. 
See  p.  75, 
and  cp. 
"  Victo- 
rian 
Poets'''': 
tP.  81,  82, 
251-3- 


William 
Dean 
Howells : 
1837- 


novelist-poets.  Hood  was  almost  the  only  journalist- 
poet  of  note,  a  true  vocalist,  jaded  by  hackwork. 
Nowadays,  the  conditions  are  reversed ;  the  rhythmic 
art  is  more  frequently  an  avocation.  Among  our  nov- 
elists, however,  Aldrich  always  seems  the  poet,  —  an 
author  with  whom  song  has  the  precedence.  His 
tales  are  the  prose  of  a  poetic  artist,  and  owe  to  this 
fact  their  airy  charm.  Howells  furnishes  an  instance 
of  the  apt  recognition  of  existing  tendencies.  The 
wisdom  he  has  displayed  "in  his  generation "  goes 
far  to  justify  the  diversion  we  are  observing.  His 
early  verse,  issued  conjointly  with  that  of  his  friend 
Piatt,  bore  unusual  marks  of  promise,  nor  has  he 
quite  broken  with  the  muse  or  ceased  to  hold  her 
image  in  his  heart.  Otherwise  his  bent,  like  Mr. 
James's,  was  that  of  a  critic,  scholar,  analyst ;  and  the 
determined  evolution  of  a  masterly  novel-writer,  from 
a  youth  of  the  qualifications  involved,  might  serve  as 
a  text  for  homilies  on  the  power  of  the  human  will. 
His  pen  being  his  fortune,  his  chosen  profession  that 
of  a  man  of  letters,  he  manfully  trained  himself  to 
the  production  of  literature  that  he  foresaw  would  be 
welcome  and  remunerative ;  this,  in  a  series  of  works, 
—  at  first  descriptive,  then  inventive,  —  constantly  ad- 
vancing in  perception,  in  management  of  incident  and 
character,  until  he  now  stands  where  we  find  him,  in 
the  front  rank  of  those  who  impress  observers  with  a 
sense  of  our  literary  progress.  His  poetic  gift  serves 
him  well  in  translation,  in  dramatic  adaptation,  and 
with  respect  to  the  feeling  and  artistic  effect  of  his 
tenderest  episodes.  Waiving  discussion  of  Mr.  How- 
ells's  method  as  a  novelist,  who  can  question  that 
he  has  judged  wisely,  and  has  done  far  better  for  the 
public  than  if  he  had  pursued  the  art  that  was  his 
early  choice? 


ADVANCE  IN  PROSE  FICTION 


463 


The  Pre- 
vailing 
impulse. 


By  such  examples  more   light  is  cast  upon  the   re-  \  New  out- 
duced   importance   of   our   song -makers,  and   ground  t£*km. 
discovered  for  a  belief  that  this  is  transitory  and  that  *fr*  ener- 
a  fresh  departure  will  anon  be  made.     Fancy  and  im- 
agination are  still  rife,  but  their  energy  finds  vent  in 
new    directions.      Accomplished    craftsmen,    some    of 
whom   thirty  years   ago   might  have   been   numbered 
among  the  poets,  now  supply  the   public  with  its  im- 
aginative rations  in  the  guise  of  prose  fiction  and  ro- 
mance.     Through    instinct    or   judgment,    they   have 
occupied   the   gap   in   our  literature.     The   time   has 
been   opportune;  famous   innings  were   made   by  the 
elder  minstrels  \  our  school  of  fiction  had  been  repre- 
sented  only  by   a  few  rare   and  exceptional   names. 
So  keen  has   been  the  new  impulse,  that  the  young 
neophyte  of  to-day,  instead  of  shaping  his  vague  con- 
ceptions  into  rhythm  and   imitating  the   poets  within 
his  knowledge,  longs  to  emulate   the   foremost  novel- 
ists.    In   the   flush  of  our   latest   conquest,  the   rank 
and  file  naturally  overrate  the  relative  worth  of  prose 
fiction,  which,  at  its  best,  —  as  will  appear  on  a  brief 
consideration  of   the  world's   literary  masterpieces, — 
is  not   a   more  vital   and   enduring  creation  than  the 
poet's  song.     Yet  the  movement  has  resulted  in  a  de- 
cided gain  to  the  prestige  of  our  national  authorship. 
With  a  staff  of  novelists  and  romancers  well  equipped 
in  both  invention  and  style,  —  Howells,  Aldrich,  Jul- 
ian Hawthorne,  Eggleston,  Cable,  James,  Harte,  Craw- 
ford, Bishop,  Stockton,  Lathrop,  Kip,  Mrs.  Stoddard, 
Miss    Jewett,    Miss    Woolson,    Miss     Murfree,    Miss 
Howard,  Mrs.  Foote,  and   others   who   also   are   ade- 
quate  to   cope   with   the    transatlantic    experts,  —  in 
view  of  the  results  already  obtained  from  the  field  in 
which  these  popular  authors  are  so  active,  none  can 
assume  that  the  diversion  of  creative  energy  thus  ex- 


Compen' 

sation. 


(See 
Index.) 


464 


A   LIFE-SCHOOL  BETOKENED. 


What 
cheer  ? 


A  lesson 
from  the 
novelists. 


Need  of  a 
Life- 
School. 


A  n  oppor- 
tu/ie  time. 


emplified  has  not  brought  with  it  a  measurable  com- 
pensation. 

IV. 

Both  exterior  and  subjective  conditions  having  thus 
determined  the  present  office  of  the  imagination,  the 
breathing-spell  of  poetry  is  not  without  promise  of  a 
stronger  utterance  than  ever  when  its  voice  shall    be 
renewed.     We   shall   have   more  poets  yet,  and  some 
of   those    who    have    been    named   will    contribute,    I 
doubt  not,  to  the   hastening  of  that  renewal.     They 
can  derive  from  our  fiction  itself  a  shrewd  lesson  for 
their  guidance.     Their  predecessors  fully  met  the  need 
for  idyllic  verse,  relating  to  home,  patriotism,  religion, 
and   the   workaday  life   of   an   orderly  people.     They 
did  not  scrutinize,  and  vividly  present,  the  coils  of  in- 
dividual being.     Our  people  have  outgrown  their  ju- 
venescence,  tested  their  manhood,  and  now  demand  a 
lustier  regimen.     They  crave  the  sensations  of  mature 
and  cosmopolitan  experience,  and  are  bent  upon  what 
we   are   told   is   the   proper  study  of  mankind.     The 
rise  of  our  novelists  was  the  answer  to  this  craving; 
they  depict  Life  as  it  is,  though  rarely  as  yet  in  its 
intenser  phases.      Those   who,   besides    meeting    Mr. 
James's  requirement  that  "the  mind  of  the  producer 
shall  be  displayed,"  do  reflect  life  in  something  more 
than  a  commonplace  aspect  are  the  chroniclers,  chiefly, 
of  provincial  episodes,  confined  to  sections  so  narrow 
that  it  is  scarcely  needful  to  linger  in  them  through- 
out the  narrative  of  a  sustained  work.     Their  welcome 
is  partly  due  to  the  fact  that  their  studies  are  bolder 
and  more  dramatic  than  those  of  the  restrained  East- 
ern   school.     The    muster-roll    of   the    latter   has    in- 
creased somewhat  more  rapidly  than  its  market.     We 
have  seen  poetry  out  of  demand;  the  same  thing  be- 


POETS  AND    THE  PUBLIC. 


465 


gins  to  be  observed  of  prose  fiction.  Renewed  atten- 
tion is  given  to  history,  memoirs,  travels ;  but  many 
signs  declare  that  there  never  was  a  time  when  a  live 
and  glowing  poet  would  have  a  better  chance  than 
now.  In  the  multitude  of  ambitious  novelists,  distinc- 
tion is  less  easily  gained.  Only  the  poet  can  excite 
the  subtlest  thrills,  the  most  abiding  sensations.  The 
promise  of  his  return  lies  in  the  truth  that  our  spirit- 
ual nature  does  abhor  a  vacuum,  —  the  need  insures 
the  supply.  Though  our  public  has  resorted  to  prose 
literature  for  its  wants,  it  now  and  then  still  reads  a 
poem  with  avidity.  The  sudden  popularity  of  Ar- 
nold's "Light  of  Asia"  —  the  work  of  a  scholar  and 
enthusiast  rather  than  of  a  strongly  original  hand  — 
was  of  real  significance.  That  production  gave  a 
sensuous  and  legendary  idealization  of  the  religious 
feeling  of  an  impressible  body  of  readers ;  it  appealed 
to  an  existing  sentiment;  it  focalized  the  rays  in 
which  the  faiths  of  the  East  and  the  West  are  blend- 
ing throughout  the  modern  world.  In  short,  it  was 
most  timely,  and  it  was  both  attractive  and  dimen- 
sional. If,  then,  the  people  care  little  for  current 
poetry,  is  it  not  because  that  poetry  cares  little  for 
the  people  and  fails  to  assume  its  vantage-ground? 
Busying  itself  with  intricacies  of  form  and  sound  and 
imagery,  it  scarcely  deigns  to  reach  the  general  heart. 
Your  skill  is  admirable,  say  the  people,  and  of  inter- 
est to  your  own  guild,  but  we  ask  that  it  shall  be 
used  to  some  purpose.  Convey  to  us  the  intellect 
and  passion  wherewith  poets  are  thought  to  be  en- 
dowed, the  gloom  and  glory  of  human  life,  the  na- 
tional aspiration,  the  pride  of  the  past  and  vision  of 
the  future. 

Rhythmical  productions  will  be  acceptable  that  com- 
pare with  those  of  the   past,  as  vigorous  figure-paint- 
30 


The  poets 
and  the 
public. 


The  for- 
mer must 
respond  to 


466 


GROWING  DRAMATIC  SPIRIT. 


the  new 

dramatic 

instinct. 


Cp.  "Vic- 
torian 
Poets": 
^•344- 


Promise  of 
a  dramatic 
movement. 


ings  with  the  canvases  of  our  elder  artists.  Even  in 
landscape  we  have  reached  the  stage  where  human 
feeling,  and  that  American,  pervades  the  most  favored 
work.  Nor  will  it  be  enough  to  depict  life  in  aggre- 
gated and  general  types.  Whitman  has  achieved  this, 
conveying  a  national  spirit  in  his  symphonic  echoes 
of  the  murmuring  towns  and  forests  and  ocean-waves. 
He  gives  us  life  and  movement,  but  the  specific  char- 
acter, the  personal  movement,  seldom  animate  his 
pages.  Individuals,  men  and  women,  various  and 
real,  must  be  set  before  us  in  being  and  action,  — 
above  all,  in  that  mutual  play  upon  one  another's 
destinies  which  results  from  what  we  term  the  dra- 
matic purport  of  life.  Thus  rising  above  mere  intro- 
spection and  analysis,  poetry  must  be  not  so  much  a 
criticism  as  the  objective  portrayal  and  illumination 
of  life  itself — and  that  not  only  along  the  unevent- 
ful, quiescent  flow  of  rural  existence,  but  upon  the 
tides  of  circumstance  where  men  are  striving  for  in- 
tense sensations  and  continuous  development. 

In  other  words,  the  time  has  come  for  poetry,  in 
any  form,  that  shall  be  essentially  dramatic.  This 
kind  has  rounded  each  recurring  cycle  in  other  liter- 
atures than  our  own.  It  is  a  symptom  of  maturity, 
and  we,  in  our  turn,  approach  the  age  when  life  at- 
tains fire  and  color  and  is  full  of  experiences  that 
give  tone  to  art.  I  think  that  our  future  efforts  will 
result  in  dramatic  verse,  and  even  in  actual  dramas 
for  both  the  closet  and  the  stage.  I  am  aware  that 
this  belief  has  been  entertained  before,  and  prema- 
turely; it  was  as  strong  in  the  time  of  Tyler  and 
Dunlap  and  Payne,  nor  would  our  own  experiments 
be  much  more  significant  than  theirs,  were  it  not  for 
the  recent  and  encouraging  efforts  of  our  younger 
authors,  several  of  whom  are  among  the  poets  already 


THE   STAGE. 


467 


named.  Playwrights  still  feel  compelled  to  offer  ru- 
dimentary work  to  their  audiences.  The  primary  and 
denominative  element  of  the  actor's  art,  that  of  ac- 
tion, with  every  aid  of  scenic  effect,  just  now  is  all 
in  all.  The  text  is  but  an  adjunct  to  the  pantomime. 
Realism,  also,  is  as  conspicuous  in  our  theatres  as  in 
the  latest  French  and  English  novels.  It  was  desir- 
able to  get  beyond  stale  and  absurd  conventionality, 
yet  certain  conventions  are  indispensable  to  art;  there 
is  nothing  ideal  in  a  slavish,  mechanical  reproduction 
of  speech  and  manners.  Unduly  favored  as  the  text 
once  may  have  been,  we  now  err  as  plainly  in  the 
opposite  way.  A  poet  turns  playwright,  and  there 
begins  the  inevitable  conflict  with  the  stage  itself. 
He  yields  to  the  conviction  of  actor  and  manager 
that  the  text  will  never  regain  the  critical  interest  of 
audiences.  I  make  bold  to  think  otherwise ;  to  hold 
that  belief  is  to  overlook  the  recorded  equipoise  of 
text  and  action  at  every  epoch  when  the  theatre  has 
been  preeminent.  The  sentiment  of  the  hour  may  be 
against  the  production  of  what  are  termed  literary 
plays ;  yet  nothing,  after  all,  is  surer  to  draw  than 
some  familiar  tragedy  or  comedy  of  the  great  dra- 
matic poets.  In  Italy,  France,  Germany,  it  is  the 
same.  The  people  want  amusement,  and  in  all  times 
they  prefer  the  best  offered;  when  there  were  none 
but  poetic  dramas,  they  sustained  them,  and  intelli- 
gently traversed  the  rendering  of  dialogue  and  phrase. 
On  the  other  hand,  wretched  mounting  and  acting 
will  make  the  finest  text  wearisome.  The  whole  dis- 
pute turns  largely  upon  circumstance  and  fashion. 
Notwithstanding  Tennyson's  undramatic  cast  of  gen- 
ius, he  has  succeeded  —  but  only,  as  was  predicted 
long  ago,  after  successive  trials  and  by  a  tour  de  force 
—  in  producing   an  excellent  drama.     "Becket,"  with 


Text  and 
action. 


Cfi.  "Vic- 
torian 
Poets  "  : 
p.  266. 


The  Stage. 


Cp.  "Vic- 
torian 
Poets  "  ; 
f>p.  191, 
4i3- 
"Becket." 


468 


POET-PLA  Y WRIGHTS. 


■ Frances- 
co, da  Ri- 
mini.1'' 


A  udience 
and  play- 
wright. 


Effects  of 
town-life. 


respect  to  action,  plot,  and  language,  is  greatly  supe- 
rior to  many  plays  of  the  Knowles  and  Talfourd  pe- 
riod, which  still  hold  the  stage;  and  yet  the  public, 
and  various  theatrical  critics,  will  have  none  of  it. 
The  time  has  been  simply  unpropitious.  Boker's 
"Francesca  da  Rimini"  waited  twenty-five  years  for 
an  actor  and  a  manager  fully  to  utilize  its  possibili- 
ties. 

We  see  that  for  the  development  of  an  ideal  drama 
the  public  taste  and  sentiment  must  rise  accordingly. 
The  stage  reflects  these  ;  but  it  also  can  anticipate 
and  help  to  form  them,  through  works  of  genius  which 
the  people  in  the  end  will  appreciate.  The  ambitious 
playwright,  on  his  part,  must  realize  that  his  faculty 
is  the  greater  when  adaptable  and  inventive.  Writer, 
actor,  theatre  and  public,  must  unite  to  give  effect  to 
any  drama.  Brander  Matthews  says  that  "  for  a  poetic 
play  to  have  a  success,  it  must  be  the  work  of  one 
who  is  both  poet  and  playwright;  who  is,  in  fact, 
playwright  first  and  poet  after,"  —  and  cites  the  ex- 
amples of  Moliere  and  Shakespeare  and  Hugo,  and 
of  lesser  men.  Playwrights  not  familiar  with  the 
stage  from  youth  have  succeeded  only  after  failures. 
Our  dramatists  are  likely  to  spring  from  those  who, 
if  not  used  to  theatrical  "  business "  and  people,  are 
thoroughly  acquainted  with  town  life.  We  know  the 
retardant  effect  of  society  upon  artists  of  exalted  sen- 
sibility. Liszt's  rival  declares  that  social  distractions 
have  prevented  the  Abbe  from  being  a  great  composer ; 
that  Bach's  seclusion  and  Beethoven's  deafness  pro- 
tected them  from  outside  voices  and  made  them  hear 
the  voice  of  God  within.  Yet  the  dramatist,  whose 
theme  is  human  action,  must  have  observed  that  ac- 
tion under  the  excitements  and  among  the  contrasted 
types  of  civic  life.     The   increase  of  our  cities   itself 


THEME  AND  ATMOSPHERE. 


469 


betokens   a   change  from  idyllic  to  dramatic  methods 
in  literary  art. 

But  I  have  allowed  my  faith  in  the  need  of  such 
a  change  to  lead  me  into  surmises  concerning  the  rise 
of  the  stage-drama  in  America.  The  latter  certainly 
would  give  a  rapid  impulse  to  the  former.  As  it  is, 
a  young  playwright  like  Carleton  finds  it  prudent  to 
adapt  his  labors  to  the  immediate  requirements  of  the 
stage,  after  testing  his  literary  faculty  by  the  composi- 
tion of  a  metrical  drama,  Memnon,  a  work  indebted 
to  Elizabethan  models  in  its  rhetoric  and  emblazonry, 
and  not  devoid  of  fine  diction  and  poetic  glow. 
Among  the  numerous  plays  offered  to  the  managers, 
there  probably  are  some  of  an  elevated  class  that 
would  be  available  under  conditions  which  I  think  will 
not  be  long  delayed.  Meanwhile,  under  existing  con- 
ditions, our  few  playwrights  who  combine  tact  with 
refinement,  —  and  Bronson  Howard  should  have  the 
credit  due  to  a  pioneer  who  still  works  among  the 
foremost,  —  probably  have  done  the  best  that  could 
be  done,  with  a  sense  of  what  is  now  practicable,  and 
a  hopeful  willingness  to  prepare  the  way  for  their 
successors,  poetic  or  otherwise,  in  the  early  future. 
Time  is  all  that  is  needed  to  give  us  the  heroic  tem- 
per and  coadequate  themes.  Of  the  two,  tradition 
is  less  essential  to  romance  and  the  drama  than  a 
favoring  atmosphere.  The  wreath  must  be  held  out 
by  a  public  that  delights  in  the  Pythian  games,  and 
won  by  contestants  worthy  to  receive  it. 


There  are  questions  that  come  home  to  one  who 
would  aid  in  speeding  the  return  of  "  the  Muse,  dis- 
gusted at  "  the  "  age  and  clime."     Can  I,  he  asks,  be 


Henry 
Guy 

Carleton 
1855- 


"Metn- 
non,"  1884. 


Pioneer 
efforts. 


The  poet's 
faculty 
compulsive 
and  last- 


470 


THE  POET'S   CREDENTIALS. 


Favoring 
Sonditions: 


reckoned  with  the  promoters  of  her  new  reign  ?  Yes, 
it  will  be  answered,  if  your  effort  is  in  earnest  and  if 
you  are  in  truth  a  poet.  To  doubt  of  this  is  almost 
the  doubt's  own  confirmation.  That  writer  to  whom 
rhythmic  phrases  come  as  the  natural  utterance  of  his 
extremest  hope,  regret,  devotion,  is  a  poet  of  some  de- 
gree. At  the  rarest  crises  he  finds  that,  without  and 
even  beyond  his  will,  life  and  death  and  all  things 
dear  and  sacred  are  made  auxiliary  to  the  compulsive 
purpose  of  his  art ;  just  as  in  the  passion  for  science, 
as  if  to  verify  the  terrible  irony  of  Balzac  and  Words- 
worth, the  alchemist  will  analyze  his  wife's  tears,  the 
Linnaean  will  botanize  even  upon  his  mother's  grave  :  — 

"  Alas,  and  hast  thou  then  so  soon  forgot 
The  bond  that  with  thy  gift  of  song  did  go  — 
Severe  as  fate,  fixed  and  unchangeable? 
Dost  thou  not  know  this  is  the  poet's  lot ! " 

If,  when  his  brain  is  in  working  humor,  its  chambers 
filled  with  imaged  pageantry,  the  same  form  of  utter- 
ance becomes  his  ready  servant,  then  he  is  a  poet 
indeed.  But  if  he  has  a  dexterous  metrical  faculty, 
and  hunts  for  theme  and  motive,  —  or  if  his  verse 
does  not  say  what  otherwise  cannot  be  said  at  all,  — 
then  he  is  a  mere  artisan  in  words,  and  less  than 
those  whpse  thought  and  feeling  are  too  deep  for 
speech.  The  true  poet  is  haunted  by  his  gift,  even 
in  hours  of  drudgery  and  enforced  prosaic  life.  He 
cannot  escape  it.  After  spells  of  dejection  and  wea- 
riness, when  it  has  seemed  to  leave  for  ever,  it  always, 
always,  returns  again  —  perishable  only  with  himself. 
Again  he  will  ask,  What  are  my  opportunities  ? 
What  is  the  final  appraisement  of  the  time  and  situa- 
tion ?  We  have  noted  those  latter-day  conditions  that 
vex  the  poet's  mind.  Yet  art  is  the  precious  outcome 
of   all  conditions ;   there   are   none  that   may   not  be 


HIS  OPPORTUNITY, 


UpORNl47l 


transmuted  in  its  crucible.  Science,  whose  iconoclasm 
had  to  be  considered,  first  of  all,  in  our  study  of  the 
Victorian  period,  has  forced  us  to  adjust  ourselves  to 
its  dispensation.  A  scientific  conflict  with  tradition 
always  has  been  in  progress,  though  never  so  deter- 
minedly as  now.  But  the  poet  and  artist  keep  pace 
with  it,  even  forestall  it,  so  that  each  new  wonder 
leads  to  greater  things,  and  the  so-called  doom  of  art 
is  a  victorious  transition :  — 

"  If  my  bark  sinks,  't  is  to  another  sea." 

As  to  material  conditions,  we  find  that  the  practical 
eagerness  of  the  age,  and  of  our  own  people  before 
all,  has  so  nearly  satisfied  its  motive  as  to  beget  the 
intellectual  and  aesthetic  needs  to  which  beauty  is  the 
purveyor.  As  heretofore  in  Venice  and  other  com- 
monwealths, first  nationality,  then  riches,  then  the  rise 
of  poetry  and  the  arts.  — After  materialism  and  the 
scientific  stress,  the  demands  of  journalism  have  been 
the  chief  counter-sway  to  poetic  activity.  But  our 
journals  are  now  the  adjuvants  of  imaginative  effort 
in  prose  and  verse;  the  best  of  them  are  conducted 
by  writers  who  have  the  literary  spirit,  and  who  make 
room  for  ideal  literature,  even  if  it  does  not  swell 
their  lists  so  rapidly  as  that  of  another  kind.  The 
poet  can  get  a  hearing;  our  Chattertons  need  not 
starve  in  their  garrets  ;  there  never  was  a  better  mar- 
ket for  the  wares  of  Apollo,  —  their  tuneful  venders 
need  not  hope  for  wealth,  but  if  one  cannot  make  his 
genius  something  more  than  its  own  exceeding  great 
reward,  it  is  because  he  mistakes  the  period  or  scorns 
to  address  himself  fitly  to  his  readers.  Finally,  criti- 
cism is  at  once  more  catholic  and  more  discriminating 
than  of  old.  Can  it  make  a  poet,  or  teach  him  his 
mission  ?    Hardly ;  but  it   can  spur   him  to  his  best, 


Intellect- 

ual. 


Material, 
and 


Literary. 


472 


SURSUM  CORD  A. 


Require- 
ments. 


Poetry 
not  merely 
an  art,  but 
an  inspira- 
tion. 


R.  S. 

Storrs :  at 
Union  Col- 
Uge,  1883. 


and  point  out  the  heresies  from  which  he   must  free 
himself  or  address  the  oracle  in  vain. 

Such   being  our   opportunities,  we   have   seen   that 
the  personal  requirements  are  coequal,  and  their  sum- 
ming-up   may  well    be    the    conclusion   of  the  whole 
matter.      Warmth,    action,    genuine    human    interest, 
must  vivify  the  minstrel's  art;  the  world  will  receive 
him  if  he  in  truth  comes   into  his  own.      Taste   and 
adroitness   can   no   longer  win   by   novelty.      Natural 
emotion  is  the  soul  of  poetry,  as  melody  is  of  music ; 
the  same   faults  are   engendered   by  over-study  of  ei- 
ther art;   there   is   a  lack  of   sincerity,  of   irresistible 
impulse,  in  both  the   poet   and   the   composer.      The 
decorative  vogue  has  reached  its  lowest  grade  —  that 
of   assumption  for  burlesque   and   persiflage;  just  as 
Pre-Raphaelitism,  at   first   a   reform   in   art,  extended 
to  poetry,  to  architecture,  to  wall-decoration,  to  stage- 
setting,  finally  to  the  dress  of  moonstruck  blue-stock- 
ings and  literary  dandies.     What  has  been  gained  in 
new  design  will  survive.      But   henceforth   the   sense 
of  beauty  must  have  something  "  far  more  deeply  in- 
terfused "  :   the   ideal,  which,    though   not   made  with 
hands  of  artificers,  is  eternal  on   the  earth  as  in  the 
heavens,  because  it  is  inherent  in  the  soul.     There  is 
also  one  prerequisite,  upon  which  stress  was   laid  by 
Dr.    Storrs    in    his     application     to    modern    art    of 
Goethe's  reservation  as  to  the  worth  of  certain  engrav- 
ings:    "Still,  something  is  wanting   in    all  these   pic- 
tures —  the  Manly.  ...  The  pictures   lack   a  certain 
urgent  power,"  etc.     Culture,  I  have  said,  will  make 
a  poet  draw  ahead  of  his  unstudious  fellows,  but  the 
resolve   born  of  conviction  is  needed  to  sustain    the 
advance.      The    lecturer    rightly   declared    that   only 
"courageous   work  will   suit   America,  whose   race   is 
essentially   courageous    and    stoical."     Our   key-note 


OUR  NOVITIATE  ENDED. 


473 


assuredly  should  be  that  of  freshness  and  joy;  the 
sadness  of  declining  races,  only,  has  the  beauty  of 
natural  pathos.  There  is  no  cause  for  morbidly  in- 
trospective verse  —  no  need,  I  hope,  for  dilettante- 
ism  —  in  this  brave  country  of  ours  for  centuries  to 
come. 

I  think,  too,  we  may  claim  that  there  is  no  better 
ideal  of   manhood  than   the   American   ideal,  derived 
from  an  aggregation  of  characteristic  types.     Our  fu- 
ture verse  should   be  more   native  than  that   of   the 
past,  in   having   a  flavor   more   plainly  distinct   from 
the    motherland.      Not    that    our  former    contingent 
misrepresented  the  America  of  its  time.    Even  Long- 
fellow's work,  with  so  much  of  imported  theme  and 
treatment,  conveyed  a  sentiment  that  came,  say  what 
we  will,  from  no  foreign  source.      The  reason  that  a 
decidedly  autochthonous  kind  was  not  then  proffered, 
unless   by  Whitman,  was   that    a  distinction   between 
the  conditions  of  England  and  America  was  not  more 
strongly  established.     Since  the  war  our  novitiate  has 
ended.     We  welcome  home-productions  ;  our  servility 
to  foreign  judgment  has  lessened,  and  we  apply  with 
considerable   self-poise    our    own    standards   of    criti- 
cism to  things  abroad.     We  have  outlived  the  greed 
of  a  childhood  that  depends  on  sustenance  furnished 
by  its  elders,  and  are  far  indeed  from   the  senile  at- 
rophy which  also   must   borrow  to  recruit  its  wasting 
powers.     Our    debt   to    acute  foreign    critics   is   none 
the  less  memorable.    They,  in  truth,  were  the  first  to 
counsel  us   that  we   should   lean   upon   ourselves;  to 
insist   that  we   ought   at   least   to   escape   Old  World 
limitations,— the  first   to   recognize   so   heartily   any- 
thing purely  American,  even  our  sectional  humor,  as 
to  bring  about  our  discovery  that   it  was   not   neces- 
sarily "a  poor  thing,"  although  our  "own." 


The 

A  merican 

ideal. 


474 


POINTS  OF   VANTAGE. 


A  national 
type.    See 
PP-  7"9>  96 
97- 


Its  promo- 
tion. 


The  copy- 
right ques- 
tion. See 
fp.  23-25. 


A  merican 
taste, 


It  is  agreed  that  sectional  types,  which  thus  have 
lent  their  raciness  to  various  productions,  are  subsid- 
iary to  the  formation  of  one  that  shall  be  national. 
A  character  formed  of  mingling  components  must 
undergo  the  phases  of  defective  hybridity ;  our  own 
is  just  beginning  to  assume  a  coherence  that  is  the 
promise  of  a  similar  adjustment  in  art.  As  local 
types  disappear  there  may  be  special  losses,  yet  a 
general  gain.  The  lifting  of  the  Japanese  embargo 
was  harmful  to  the  purity  of  the  insular  art,  but 
added  something  to  the  arts  of  the  world  at  large. 
Even  now  our  English  cousins,  seeking  for  what  they 
term  Americanism  in  our  literature,  begin  to  find  its 
flavor  stealthily  added  to  their  own. 

Nothing  will  strengthen  more  rapidly  the  native 
bias  of  our  literature  than  its  increase  of  dramatic 
tone.  Speech,  action,  and  passion  will  be  derived 
from  life  as  here  seen,  from  factors  near  at  hand 
and  stuff  of  which  the  writer  himself  is  moulded. 
Our  playwrights  are  now  encouraged  by  a  copyright 
royalty.  All  classes  of  literary  workmen,  however, 
still  endure  the  disadvantage  of  a  market  drugged 
with  stolen  goods.  Shameless  as  is  our  legal  plun- 
dering of  foreign  authors,  our  blood  is  most  stirred 
by  the  consequent  injury  to  home  literature,  —  by  the 
Wrongs,  the  poverty,  the  discouragement  to  which  the 
foes  of  International  Copyright  subject  our  own  writ- 
ers. The  nerve  and  vitality  of  the  latter  can  have 
no  stronger  demonstration  than  by  the  progress  which 
they  make  while  loaded  with  an  almost  insufferable 
burden.  When  this  shall  at  last  be  lifted,  their  for- 
ward movement  may  answer  to  the  most  sanguine 
conjecture.  Of  two  things  they  already  are  assured  : 
First,  the  perception,  the  inborn  taste,  of  their  coun- 
trymen stands  in  need  of  less  tutorage  than  that  of 


THE  NA  TIONAL  INHERITANCE. 


475 


transatlantic    Saxon   races.      Our   people    have   blun- 
dered from   isolation ;  confront  them  with  the  models 
of  older  lands,  and  they  quickly  learn  to  choose  the 
fit  and  beautiful,  and  the  time  is   now  reached  when 
the   finest   models   are    widely    attainable.      Secondly, 
our  inheritance    is    a  language    that   is   relatively  the 
greatest   treasure-house    of    the    world's    literature:   at 
once    the    most    laconic    and    the    most    copious    of 
tongues,  —  the   sturdiest   in    its    foundations   of   emo- 
tion and  utility,  the  most  varied  by  appropriation  of 
synonyms    from    all    languages,     new    and    old;    the 
youngest  and  most  occidental  of  the  great  modes  of 
speech,  steadily  diffusing  itself  about  the  globe,  with 
no  possible   supplanter  or  successor   except   itself   at 
further  stages  of   maturity;   finally,   elastic   and    copi- 
ous  most  of   all   in  the   land  which   adds  to   it   new 
idioms,  of  cisatlantic  growth,  or  assimilated  from  the 
dialects  of  many  races  that  here   contribute  their  dic- 
tion to  its   own.      A  language   whose    glory  is   that 
even  corruptions  serve  to  speed  its  growth,  and  whose 
fine  achievement  long  has  been   to   make  the  neolo- 
gism, even  the  solecism,   of    one  generation  the  clas- 
sicism of   the  next.      This   is   the   potent   and   sono- 
rous instrument  which  our  poet  has  at  his  command, 
and  the  genius  of  his  country,  like  Ariel,  bids  him 


Our 

English 

tongue. 


take 


This  slave  of  music,  for  my  sake." 


The  twilight  of  the  poets,  succeeding  to  the 
brightness  of  their  first  diurnal  course,  is  a  favora- 
ble interval  at  which  to  review  the  careers  of  those 
whose  work  therewith  is  ended.  Although  at  such  a 
time   public   interest  may   set  in   other  directions,  I 


Past, 
Present, 
and 
Future. 


476 


CONJECTURE   OF  THE  DAWN. 


Art's 
thangeless 


have  adhered  to  a  task  so  arduous,  yet  so  fascinat- 
ing to  the  critical  and  poetic  student.  When  the 
lustre  of  a  still  more  auspicious  day  shall  yield  in 
its  turn  to  the  recurring  dusk,  a  new  chronicler  will 
have  the  range  of  noble  imaginations  to  consider, 
heightened  in  significance  by  comparison  with  the 
field  of  these  prior  excursions.  But,  if  I  have  not 
wholly  erred  in  respect  to  the  lessons  derivable  from 
the  past,  he  will  not  go  far  beyond  them.  The  can- 
ons are  not  subject  to  change;  he,  in  turn,  will  de- 
duce the  same  elements  appertaining  to  the  chief  of 
arts,  and  test  his  poets  and  their  bequests  by  the 
same  unswerving  laws.  And  concerning  the  dawn 
which  may  soon  break  upon  us  unawares,  as  we 
make  conjecture  of  the  future  of  American  song,  it 
is  difficult  to  keep  the  level  of  restraint  —  to  avoid 
"rising  on  the  wings  of  prophecy."  Who  can  doubt 
that  it  will  correspond  to  the  future  of  the  land  it- 
self, —  of  America  now  wholly  free  and  interblend- 
ing,  with  not  one  but  a  score  of  civic  capitals,  each 
an  emulative  centre  of  taste  and  invention,  a  focus 
of  energetic  life,  ceaseless  in  action,  radiant  with  the 
glow  of  beauty  and  creative  power. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Abbey,  Henry  (1842-    ),  443. 

Accent,  373  ;  and  quantity,  198. 

"Ad  Vatem,"  131. 

Addison,  286. 

Affaire  Climenceau,  by    Dumas,  fils, 

368. 
Affectation,  Poe's,  260 ;    the  bane  of 

poetry,  312  ;  Byron's,  312 ;  types  of, 

313  ;  and  see  388. 
Affluence,  Lowell's,  337. 
Agamemnon's  Daughter,  Snider's,  454. 
Ages,  The,  Bryant's,  73. 
Airs  from  Arcady,  Bunner's,  448. 
Akenside,  67. 
Albee,  John,  443. 
Alcott,  Amos  Bronson,  52,  355. 
Alden,   Henry    Mills,   on    Whitman, 

381. 
Aldrich,  Thomas  Bailey,  440  ;  beauty 

of  his  verse  and  prose,  ib. ;     artistic 

restraint,  441  ;  as  a  novelist,  462 ; 

and  see  54,  404,  420,  442,  463. 
Alger,  William  Rounseville  (1823-     ), 

55- 

Allan,  John,  foster-father  of  Poe, 
230-232. 

Allen,  Elizabeth  Ann  Akers  ( 1832-  ), 
50,  446. 

Allston,  Washington,  37,  39,  46. 

America,  how  far  homogeneous,  8  ; 
course  of  its  intellect  and  action, 
31 ;  poetry,  45  ;  milieu,  48. 

America,  Poetry  of,  its  rise  the  sub- 
ject of  this  work,  1,4;  historic  sig- 


nificance, 2 ;  conditions  affecting  it, 
11-25;  'ts  barren  colonial  period, 
12-16;  Revolutionary  period,  16; 
early  Republican  period,  16-25  ; 
first  real  school,  28-30 ;  effect  of 
Civil  War,  29;  review  of  its  evo- 
lution from  early  times  to  the  vigor 
of  the  recent  school,  31-61  ;  long 
subsidiary  to  other  literature,  31  ; 
sectional  differentiation,  37  ;  pseu- 
do-American, 42,  43  ;  School  of  Na- 
ture, 45-47  ;  national  and  domestic, 
48,  49  ;  religious,  50  ;  culture,  phil- 
osophic, artistic,  etc.,  51-59,  — 
Whitman  decries  same,  60  ;  review 
of  existing  conditions  and  specu- 
lation as  to  future,  435-476;  early 
and  later  characteristics  distin- 
guished, 459  ;  promise  of  the  future, 
476 ;  and  see  Introduction. 
Americanism,  in  what  consisting,  5- 
10 ;  Grant  White's  statement,  5 ; 
readily  distinguished,  5-10 ;  phys- 
ical, 5  ;  mental,  etc.,  6-8  ;  incom- 
pleteness, 7  ;  composite,  7,  8  ;  its 
value,  8 ;  foreign  recognition,  8,  9 ; 
sectional  and  local  types,  9,  10 ; 
the  new  Americanism,  10  ;  emo- 
tional traits,  29 ;  pseudo-literary, 
42,  43  ;  Saxon  quality  of,  48 ;  Bry- 
ant's, 66  ;  types  of,  95,  99,  100 ;  rec- 
ognized traits,  96 ;  question  of  a 
"national  "  and  "  thoroughly  Amer- 
ican "  poet,  96, 97  ;  Whittier's,  III ; 


480 


INDEX. 


Emerson's,  159  ;  necessary  to  a  com- 
prehension of  that  poet,  159 ;  Whit- 
man's, 166,  353, 354,  383,  384  ;  Whit- 
man on  "  These  States,"  358  ;  Long- 
fellow's share  in,  180,  182,  —  his 
American  idyls,  195-203,  etc.,  etc.; 
not  in  the  form,  but  the  spirit,  of 
verse,  289 ;  American  fondness  for 
wildwood  scenes,  318  ;  Lowell's, 
346  ;  American  love  of  travel,  400  ; 
of  our  miscellaneous  verse,  456 ; 
present  growth  of,  473 ;  and  see 
220,  also  Nationality,  etc. 

American  Homestead,  see  Domesticity. 

American  Literature,  History  of,  Ty- 
ler's, 32-34. 

"  American  Review,  The,"  236. 

Among  my  Books,  Lowell's,  1st  &  2d 
series,  327. 

Anapestic  Verse,  Swinburne's,  195 ; 
and  hexameter,  196. 

Ancestral  Feeling,  Holmes's,  299. 

"  Ancient  Mariner,  The,"  Coleridge's, 
118,  251. 

Andromeda,  Kingsley's,  196,  197. 

"  Annuals,"  "  Souvenirs,"  etc.,  42,  43. 

Antique,  the,  Grecian  disregard  of 
Landscape,  45,  46 ;  Bryant's  Ho- 
meric quality,  84  ;  not  reproduced 
in  English  hexameter  verse,  196; 
pseudo-classical  verse,  Longfellow's 
"  Pandora,"  204 ;  its  method  com- 
pared with  the  modern,  311,  312; 
esoteric  feeling,  369. 

Antislavery  Conflict,  Bryant's  warfare 
against  slavery,  92  ;  Whittier's  part 
in,  104-106,  124;  poetry  of,  112, — 
Whittier's,  T21, 127, —  Longfellow's, 
121,  191  ;  The  Antislavery  Declara- 
tion, 130;  Holmes's  attitude,  298, 
—  Lowell's,  310  ;  importance  of,  100. 

Apothegms,  Holmes's,  292. 

Aristophanes,  332. 

Aristotle,  142. 


Arnold,  Edwin,  465. 

Arnold,  Elizabeth,  mother  of  Poe,  230. 

Arnold,  George,  59,  442. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  on  simplicity,  78 ; 
on  translating  Homer,  89 ;  on  hex- 
ameter verse,  197,  198 ;  on  transla- 

-  tion,  211  ;  on  Emerson,  297,  and 
Lowell,  339-341 ;  suggestive  poems 
of,  340  ;  and  see  170. 

Arrian,  142. 

Art,  its  order  of  development,  46 ; 
"  Art  for  Art's  sake,"  48,  240,  263, 
459  ;  national  quality,  98  ;  devotion 
required,  105  ;  its  method,  compared 
with  that  of  Philosophy,  134;  Emer- 
son's, 135, — his  interpretation  of, 
148,  —  his  theory  of,  149;  fitness  of 
things,  148,  149  ;  sense  of,  in  social 
life,  300;  compared  with  Science, 
x55>  grades  of  perfection,  1595 
Emerson's  Essay  on,  170,  —  his 
chief  canon,  id. ;  the  mirror  of 
Longfellow,  216;  its  votaries  under 
compulsion,  246 ;  indecency  out- 
lawed, 366  ;  must  conform  to  Na- 
ture's method,  369 ;  Benjamin's 
monograph  on,  372 ;  Art  vs.  Arti- 
fice, 386;  vs.  Experience,  415;  Tay- 
lor's theory,  415 ;  Lessing's  law  of 
distinctions,  449 ;  Lanier's  theory  of 
composition,  450 ;  Expression  its 
final  purpose,  459;  its  so-called 
"doom,"  471  ;  canons  of,  unaltera- 
ble, 476. 

Artificiality,  in  style,  158  ;  Whitman's, 
386,  387  ;  of  Tennyson's  and  Long- 
fellow's dramas,  429. 

Art  School  of  poets,  54-58. 

Asceticism,  conflict  with,  51,  —  Long- 
fellow's, 181 ;  Holmes's  protest 
against,  277. 

Aspiration,  Taylor's  noble  ideals,  396, 
430 ;  tame  ambition  of  recent  poets, 
461. 


INDEX. 


481 


"Atlantic  Monthly,"  91,  293;  edited 
by  Lowell,  326  ;  and  see  409. 

At  the  Court  of  King  Edwin,  Leigh- 
ton's,  454. 

Attractiveness,  interesting  quality  of 
Longfellow's  verse,  198. 

Aurelius,  Marcus,  142. 

Authorship,  as  a  means  of  subsistence, 
22,  23,  237  ;  defrauded  of  Interna- 
tional Copyright,  23,  25  ;  growing 
prestige  of  American,  463. 

Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  -  Table, 
Holmes's,  reviewed,  291,  292. 

Aytoun,  Prof.,  443. 

"Bacchus,"  Emerson's,  154. 

Bach,  468. 

Background,  lack  of,  in  new  countries, 
20  ;  afforded  by  Scotland,  21,  22. 

Bacon,  171. 

Ballads  and  Balladists,  Whittier  our 
foremost  balladist,  112-114;  Long- 
fellow's spirited  work,  192; 
Holmes's,  282;  Taylor's  Califor- 
nian  Ballads,  403. 

Ballads  and  Other  Poems,  Longfellow, 
189-192. 

Balzac,  470 ;  and  Poe,  258. 

Barlow,  Joel,  36. 

Barton,  Bernard,  113. 

Bates,  Charlotte  Fiske  ( 1838-     ),  446. 

Baudelaire,  Charles,  65. 

Bay  Psalm  Book,  33. 

Beauty,  and  use,  law  of,  152  ;  sense  of, 
in  America  quickened  by  Longfel- 
low, 182  ;  Longfellow's  love  of, 
224 ;  Poe's  devotion  to,  228,  263, 
264,  —  his  sense  of,  compared  with 
Keats's,  263 ;  "  The  Rhythmical 
Creation  of,"  249. 

"  Becket,"  Tennyson's,  467. 

Beckford,  William,  252. 

"Bedouin  Song,"  Taylor,  408,  413. 

Beecher,  H.  W.,  a  saying  of,  249. 


31 


Beers,  Henry  Augustin  (1847-     )»443« 

Beethoven,  468. 

Behavior,  Emerson's  treatises  on,  175. 

"Bells,  The,"  Poe's,  237,  244. 

Benjamin,  Park,  41. 

Benjamin,  S.  G.  W.,  on  originality  in 

art,  372. 
Benton,  Joel  (1832-     ),  360,  443. 
Bible,  the,  Longfellow  on  hexameters 

in  our  version,  199;  see  also  371. 
Bierstadt,  Albert,  46. 
Biglow    Papers,    The,   Lowell's,    118, 

303»  32I"325  (2d  series»  323)»  457- 

"Bion,  Epitaph  of,"  176. 

Bird,  Robert  Montgomery,  57. 

Bishop,  William  Henry,  463. 

Blake,  William,  studied  by  Whitman, 
37  h  378  ;  and  see  395. 

Blank-verse,  Stoddard's,  58  ;  original 
style  of  Bryant's,  71  ;  Bryant's,  79- 
81  ;  the  test  of  a  vigorous  poet,  79  ; 
the  American  type,  79 ;  its  ineffi- 
ciency for  Homeric  translation,  86- 
91 ;  Bryant's  and  Tennyson's,  86 ; 
Prof.  Lewis  on,  90  ;  Emerson's,  167  ; 
Poe  not  a  master  of,  258  ;  Lowell's, 
342  ;  Whitman's  objection  to,  374 ; 
its  nobility,  374  ;  Parke  Godwin  on, 
id. ;  Taylor's,  405  ;  and  see  377. 

Bloede,  Gertrude  ("Stuart  Sterne") 
(1845-     ),  446. 

Blood,  Henry  Ames  (1838-     ),  443. 

Boccaccio,  114,  208. 

Bohemianism,  235. 

Boker,  George  Henry,  his  dramas  and 
lyrics,  57 ;  friendship  with  Taylor 
and  Stoddard,  404 ;  and  see  54,  56, 
I92>  439»  468. 

Boner,  John  Henry  (1845-     )»  451- 

Bookishness,  Longfellow's,  215; 
Holmes's  reading,  297  ;  Southey's, 
407. 

Book  of  Romances,  Taylor's,  404. 

Boston,  Holmes  the  laureate  of,  284, 


482 


INDEX. 


—  poet  of  her  upper  class,  300 ;  and 

see  New  England. 
Boswell,  296. 
Botta,  Anne  Charlotte  Lynch  (18-    ), 

5°- 
Boyesen,  Hjalmar  Hjorth,  442. 

Bradford,  William,  34. 

Bradley,  Mary  (1835-     ),  446. 

Bradstreet,  Anne,  33,  277. 

"  Brahma,"  Emerson's,  149. 

Brainard,  John  Gardiner  Calkins,  38, 
104. 

Breeding,  Holmes  on,  299. 

Bridal  of  Pennacook,  Whittier's,  in. 

Briggs,  Charles  Frederick,  his  article 
on  Poe,  229. 

British  Poets,  Victorian,  lacking  in 
home-sentiment,  48 ;  miscellaneous, 
compared  with  American,  456 ;  and 
see  458,  459. 

Brook,  The,  Wright's,  443. 

Brooks,  Charles  Timothy,  55. 

Brooks,  Maria  Gowen,  43. 

Brown,  Charles  Brockden,  40. 

Brown,  J.  Appleton,  46. 

Brownell,  Henry  Howard,  49,  360. 

Browning,  Mrs.,  akin  to  Whittier,  129; 
and  Poe's  use  of  the  repetend  and 
refrain,  245  ;  and  Poe,  250 ;  and  see 
91,  112,  146,  150,  256,  307,  436,  444, 
458. 

Browning,  Robert,  disciples  of,  168; 
and  Poe,  258;  and  see  56,  91,  155, 
180,  220,  341,  389,  429,  436,  447. 

Bryant,  William  Cullen,  his  kinship 
with  our  early  landscape  painters, 
47,  68  ;  a  poet  of  liberty,  48 ;  review 
of  his  life  and  writings,  62-94  ;  feel- 
ing excited  by  his  death,  62;  his 
birth,  62 ;  honors,  63 ;  type  of  citi- 
zenship, 63 ;  as  man  and  poet,  63 ; 
his  republicanism,  64;  mental  and 
moral  traits,  64;  worldly  success, 
64;  how  far  conventional,  65  ;  a  pic- 


turesque bard,  65;  his  long  career, 
its  bearing  on  his  work,  65,  66; 
American  quality,  66  ;  Emerson  on, 
66;  influenced  by  Wordsworth,  67 ; 
as  a  poet  of  Nature,  67-69 ;  excel- 
ling in  Tone  and  breadth  of  treat- 
ment, 68;  lack  of  scientific  vision, 
69;  his  limitations,  69-71;  inflexi- 
bility, 69  ;  reticence,  70 ;  lack  of 
passion,  humor,  individual  manner, 
70,  71;  formal  verse,  70;  blank- 
verse  style,  7 1 ;  scant  range  of  dic- 
tion, 71,  76,  77  ;  a  child  of  our  early 
period,  72 ;  The  Embargo,  72 ; 
"  Thanatopsis "  and  other  pieces, 
72 ;  effect  upon  Longfellow,  etc., 
72  ;  The  Ages,  Poems,  The  Eotfhtain, 
etc.,  White-footed  Deer,  etc.,  73  ;  il- 
lustrated editions,  yy,  English  ap- 
proval, 73;  Thirty  Poems,  73,  74; 
his  life  and  pursuits,  74 ;  distaste  for 
the  law,  74;  absorption  in  journal- 
ism, 75;  prose  writings,  orations, 
etc.,  75-93;  not  devoted  to  song,  75; 
sincerity,  76 ;  effect  of  early  studies 
on  his  diction,  76 ;  pure  and  simple 
style,  77  ;  compared  to  Webster,  77  ; 
Everett's  eulogy  on,  78 ;  his  favorite 
measures, .  78-80 ;  iambic-quatrains, 
78,  79 ;  "A  Day  Dream,"  79 ;  his 
blank- verse,  79,  80,  —  in  Thanatop- 
sis, 80;  blank-verse  poems  of  nat- 
ure, 80;  blank-verse  contemplative 
poems,  80 ;  fine  lyrical  pieces,  80, 
81 ;  "  elemental "  quality  of  his 
song,  81  ;  high  imagination,  81 ; 
various  imaginative  passages,  81, 
82 ;  master  of  the  early  American 
School,  82  ;  lack  of  variety,  83  ;  his 
fancy,  83 ;  Homeric  translations,  83- 
91 ;  merits  of  his  Iliad  and  Odyssey, 
84;  his  rendering  compared  with 
Lord  Derby's,  etc.,  84 ;  idiomatic 
style,    85,    86;    Latinism,    85,    91; 


INDEX. 


483 


choice  of  measure,  87-91 ;  transla- 
tions from  the  Spanish,  91 ;  a  poet 
of  freedom  and  human  rights,  91,  92  ; 
his  poem  on  "  Slavery,"  92 ;  his 
death,  93  ;  Bryant  on  Whittier,  104 ; 
on  hexameter  verse,  197;  and  see 
37,  38,  4o,  54,  55,  "6,  188,  314,  317, 
325,  328, 374,  390,  399,  402,  411, 417, 

436- 
Buchanan,  Robert,  360. 
Bucolic  Verse  —  eclogues,   Lowell's 

"  Biglow  Papers,"  321-325  ;  and  see 

Biglow  Papers,  etc. 
Buddhism,   modern,  364 ;    success  of 

"The  Light  of  Asia,"  465. 
Building  of  the    Ship,    Longfellow's, 

207. 
Bunner,  H.  C.  (18-    ),  merit   of  his 

Airs  from  Arcady,  448. 
Burlesque,  Lowell's,  in  Biglow  Papers, 

322  ;  and  see  Satire. 
Burns,  influence  on  Whittier,  102  ;  and 

see  103,  115,  116,  321,323,  414. 
Burroughs,  John,   on   Whittier,   117; 

on  Whitman,  387  ;  and  see  153,360, 

386. 
Bushnell,  Frances  Louisa  (18-    ),  446. 
Butcher,  S.  H.,  89. 
Butler,  Samuel,  325. 
Butler,  William  Allen,  59. 
Butterworth,  Hezekiah,  443. 
Byles,  Mather  (1706-88),  34,  277. 
Byron,  as  a  poet  of  nature,  69  ;  influ- 
ence of,  452 ;  and  see  70,  146,  227, 

239,  267,  289,  327,385,  399,407,  4". 

Cable,  George  Washington,  98, 
201,  451,  463. 

"  Calaynos,"  Boker's,  404. 

Cambridge,  Mass.,  its  colonial  poets, 
34;  its  poets,  51;  Longfellow  at 
Harvard,  184 ;  and  Longfellow's 
translation  of  Dante,  209 ;  and  see 
276,  326. 


Campbell,  289,  411. 

Canning,  on  "  dactylics,"  198 ;  see  277. 

Caprice,  Lowell's,  331. 

Carleton,  Henry  Guy,  469. 

Carleton,  William,  453,  455. 

Carlyle,  influence  on  Whitman,  355; 

and  see  166,  328,  383,  422,  424. 
Carter,  Robert,  310. 
Cary,  Alice  (1820-71),  50. 
Cary,  Phoebe  (1824-71),  50. 
Cary,  Henry  Francis,  his  translation 

of  Dante,  211. 
"Cassandra  Southwick,"   Whittier's, 

107,  112. 
Caste,  and  criticism,  220. 
Cathedral,  The,  Lowell's,  342. 
Catholicity,  Lowell's,  306. 
Cayley,  translator  of  Dante,  212. 
"  Cedarcroft,"  Taylor's  home,  418. 
Centennial  Cantata,  Lanier's,  450. 
Centennial  Edition,   Whitman's,  354, 

362. 
"Centennial  Hymn,"  Whittier's,  125. 
Century  Club,  the,  66. 
Cervantes,  259,  338. 
Chadwick,  John  White  (1840-     ),  50. 
"Chambered  Nautilus,  The," 

Holmes's,  286,  292. 
Channing,  Edward  Tyrrel,  41,  138. 
Channing,  William  Ellery,  D.  D.,  52, 

122,  126,  138,  184. 
Channing,  William  Ellery  (the  poet), 

Poe  on,  168 ;  and  see  52. 
Chapman,  George,  his  "  Iliads,"  88,  — 

"  Odysseys,"  89 ;  and  see  332,  334, 

374- 
Chasteness,  of  Poe's  writings,  266. 
Chaucer,   his    narrative    verse,    289  ; 

Lowell  on,  332;    and  see  76,  114, 

208. 
Chaucerian  Verse,  89. 
Cheney,  John  Vance,  443. 
Chenier,  Andre\  268. 
Child,  Lydia  Maria  (1802-80),  41. 


484 


INDEX. 


"  Children  of  Adam  "  and  other  sex- 
ual poems  by  Whitman,  366-371. 

"Children  of  the  Lord's  Supper, 
The,"  Longfellow's  translation,  189. 

Chivers,  Dr.,  250. 

"  Christabel,"  Coleridge's,  251. 

Christus,  Longfellow's,  204. 

Chroniclers,  the  early,  34. 

Church,  Frederick  E.,  46. 

Churchill,  303. 

Citizenship,  Bryant  a  type  of  Amer- 
ican, 63. 

"City  in  the  Sea,  The,"  Poe's,  237, 
242. 

Civil  War,  historic  importance  of, 
100 ;  Holmes's  poems  of,  298,  — 
Lowell's,  323-325 ;  Whittier's  part 
in,  100 ;  Whitman's  poems  of,  362 ; 
and  see  29,  95,  397,  437. 

Class-feeling,  Whitman's,  356,  384. 

Classicism,  pseudo,  456 ;  and  see  The 
Antique. 

Class-poems,  collegiate,  —  Emerson's, 
138  ;  Holmes's,  283  ;  Lowell's,  309. 

Clemm,  Mrs.  Maria,  Poe's  mother-in- 
law,  232,  237. 

Clemm,   Virginia,  wife  of  Poe,   232, 

235- 

Clifford,  Prof.  W.  K.,  360. 

Clough,  Arthur  Hugh,  his  hexameters, 
196,  198 ;  and  see  336,  339. 

Clymer,  Ella  Dietz  (18-    ),  446. 

Cole,  Thomas,  46,  68. 

Coleridge,  "Hymn  in  the  Vale  of 
Chamouni,"  80 ;  and  Poe,  247  ;  mel- 
ody of,  251;  and  see  40,  in,  245, 
249,  327,  38l>  451- 

Coles,  Abraham  (1812-  ),  an  eigh- 
teenth-century poet,  300;  and  see 
50,  55- 

"  Collegian,  The,"  279. 

Collins,  "Dirge  in  Cymbeline,"  79; 
and  see  71,  114,  239. 

Colonialism,  surviving  traces  of,  10; 


restrictive  force,  13-16;  different 
effects  of,  on  poetry  and  painting, 
14;  pedantry,  15;  imitativeness,  15; 
Holmes's,  299 ;  Dr.  Coles  an  inher- 
itor of,  300. 

Colonial  Period  (1607-1765),  Tyler's 
Review  of,  32-34;  its  Puritan 
rhymesters,  33 ;  aspect  in  Virginia, 
34,  —  in  the  Middle  Colonies,  34; 
reflected  in  Holmes's  work,  275. 

Columbiad,  The,  Barlow's,  36. 

Commemoration  Ode,  Lowell's,  343, 
364,  427. 

Commonplace,  the,  diffusion  of,  18, 
42,  43 ;  Poe's  revolt  against,  252. 

Composition,  Emerson's  method  of, 
160. 

Compression,  rhythmical,  unique  in 
Emerson,  163. 

Conant,  Helen  Stevens  (1839-     ),  454. 

Conant,   Samuel    Stillman    (1831-    ), 

443- 

Conceits,  abundant  in  Lowell,  333 ; 
and  see  314. 

Concord,  Emerson  at,  138,  139 ;  social 
atmosphere  of,  156;  Whitman's  re- 
lations to,  355;  and  see  51,  52,  323, 
341. 

Conduct  of  Life ',  The,  Emerson's,  171, 

Cone,  Helen  Gray  (1859-    ),  447. 

Connecticut,  poets  of,  38. 

"  Conqueror  Worm,  The,"  Poe's,  245. 

Conrad,  Robert  Taylor,  41,  57. 

Conscientiousness,  artistic,  a  requi- 
site, 107,  109. 

Conservatism,  pronounced  in  Holmes, 
276,  298. 

Constitutional  Period,  36. 

Construction,  Emerson's  lack  of,  159  ; 
Lowell's  early  diffuseness,  314 ;  of 
more  import  than  decoration,  459  ; 
and  see  336. 

Conventionalism,   Whitman's  protest 


INDEX. 


485 


against,  56,  357,  383  ;  Bryant's,  65  ; 

its  value,  78. 
Conversations  on  Some  of  the  Old  Poets, 

Lowell's,  326. 
Conviction,  need  of,  472. 
Conway,  Moncure  Daniel,  360. 
Cooke,    John    Esten    (1830-     ),    54, 

451- 
Cooke,  Philip  Pendleton,  38. 
Cooke,  Rose  Terry  (1827-     ),  49,  50, 

445- 
Coolbrith,  Ina  Donna  (18-     ),  446. 
Cooper,  James  Fenimore,  39,  40,  42, 

73- 

"  Coplas  de  Manrique,"  Longfellow's, 
184. 

Copyright,  International,  23-25,  474; 
disastrous  effect  of  its  absence  upon 
English  authors,  24,  —  upon  Amer- 
ican, 24,  25. 

Cosmopolitan,  or  composite,  poets,  52- 
58 ;  New  York  group,  53 ;  South- 
ern, 54;  Longfellow,  218. 

Cotton,  John,  34. 

"Cotter's  Saturday  Night,  The," 
Burns's,  117. 

"  Cotton  Boll,  The,"  Timrod's,  449. 

Country  Life;  effect  on  poets,  115; 
compared  with  civic  life,  155. 

"Country  Lovers,  The,"  Fessenden's, 

323,  455- 

u  Courtin',  The,"  Lowell's,  323. 

Courtship  of  Miles  Standish,  TJie, 
Longfellow's,  195,  216;  reviewed, 
203. 

Cowper,  67,  71,  76,  84,  86. 

Coxe,  Arthur  Cleveland,  50. 

Cranch,  Christopher  Pearse,  52 ;  trans- 
lation of  The  Aeneid,  55;  Poe's 
strictures  on,  168. 

Crawford,  F.  Marion,  463. 

Criticism,  an  aid  to  development,  3; 
long  defective  in  America,  25;  its 
goal,   26,  223 ;    Emerson  his  own 


best  censor,  169,  170;  extremes  of 
praise  and  blame,  226;  Poe  as  a 
critic,  255-257  ;  Miss  Fuller's,  256 ; 
by  force  of  arms,  257  ;  contempo- 
rary judgment  difficult,  274;  Low- 
ell's test  of  the  poet,  315,  —  his 
critical  faculty  and  ways,  326,  334- 
338,  —  strictures  on  his  prose,  328, 
329  ;  "  creative,"  328  ;  the  debate 
over  Whitman,  350-352,  360;  test 
here  applied  to  him,  351,  367  ;  "Put- 
nam "  on  "  Leaves  of  Grass,"  354, 
355  ;  Alden  on  Whitman,  381  ;  com- 
parative, 388 ;  Whitman's  strictures 
on  modern  poetry  and  poets,  389 ; 
Taylor  as  a  critic,  421 ;  progress  in, 
471. 

"  Croakers,  The,"  39. 

Croly,  George,  280,  411. 

Cross,  Mrs.  ("George  Eliot"),  458. 

Croswell,  William  (1804-51),  50. 

Culprit  Fay,  The,  Drake's,  40. 

Culture,  American,  50,  51 ;  as  an  aid 
to  genius,  109,  135 ;  Lowell  a  type 
of,  305,  342 ;  other  examples,  305 ; 
in  New  England,  306;  the  burden 
of  "  over-culture,"  320,  341,  342. 

Curtis,  George  William,  409. 

Cynics,  the,  143. 

Dactylic  Verse,  Longfellow's,  199. 

Dana,  Charles  Anderson,  402. 

Dana,  Richard  Henry,  on  Bryant,  67  ; 

and  see  37,  39,  75. 
Dance  of  Death,  The,  Miss  Lazarus's, 

447- 

Dante,  American  translations  of,  by 
Parsons,  Norton,  and  Longfellow, 
55;  Longfellow's,  188,  209-213,— 
its  characteristics,  213;  Lowell  on, 
337  ;  and  see  455* 

Darley,  George,  411. 

Darwin,  Charles,  153. 

"Day  Dream,  A,"  Bryant's,  79. 


486 


INDEX. 


Dayman,  translator  of  Dante,  210. 

"Death of  Slavery, The/'  Bryant's,  92. 

Decadence,  Poetic,  recent  fears  of, 
436 ;  interregnum  noticeable,  457. 

Decoration,  avoided  by  Bryant,  77; 
Kensington-stitch  verse,  192 ;  luxu- 
riant and  oriental  in  Poe,  264 ;  dec- 
orative spirit  of  the  new  school,  458, 
459;  art  and  artifice,  459,  460;  its 
lowest  grade,  472 ;  and  see  Society- 
Verse  and  Introduction. 

De  Foe,  173. 

Deirdre,  Joyce's,  444. 

De  Kay,  Charles,  his  Nimrod,  Esther, 
Hesperus,  etc.,  442. 

Delicacy,  not  inconsistent  with  virility 
and  strength,  369. 

Delphic  Days,  Snider's,  198,  454. 

Democracy,  "of  the  future,"  Whit- 
man's, 56 ;  Whitman  on,  -^>i ;  poets 
of,  385. 

"  Democratic  Vistas,"  Whitman's,  363, 
389. 

De  Musset,  146,  155,  227. 

De  Quincey,  Thomas,  53. 

Derby,  Edward,  Lord,  on  hexameter, 
196;  and  see  84,  91. 

Derivatives,  faulty  use  of,  212. 

Descriptive  Poetry,  effect  of  our  land- 
scape upon  our  poets,  14, 28,  45-47  j 
not  found  in  primitive  races,  45,  46  ; 
antique,  46  ;  secondary  to  the  emo- 
tional and  dramatic,  46  ;  of  Bryant 
and  his  followers,  47,  68,  73,  80; 
Whitman's,  60, 379,  380  ;  Whittier's, 
115- 120;  penetrative  subtlety  of 
Emerson's,  151,152;  Longfellow's 
artificiality,  216, — but  a  true  poet 
of  the  sea,  217  ;  freshness  and  spon- 
taneity of  Lowell's,  317-319,  341 ; 
and  see  47,  173,  443. 

De  Senectute,  83. 

"Deserted  Village,  The,"  Goldsmith's, 
117. 


Detail,  in  poetry  and  art,  Bryant's  lack 
of,  68,  69. 

De  Vere,  Mary  Ainge  (1839-     ),  446. 

Devotion  to  poetry,  Longfellow's,  183  ; 
question  of,  409. 

Dialect  Verse,  Hay's,  453  ;  writers  in 
Eastern,  Middle,  and  Western  dia- 
lects, 455  ;  plantation  -  verse,  ib.  ; 
and  see  5,  59. 

Dickens,  328. 

Diction,  limited  range  of  Bryant's,  71 ; 
of  early  English  poets,  76  ;  of  Pope, 
Cowper,  etc.,  76 ;  of  Tennyson  and 
Swinburne,  76,  77  ;  chiefly  formed  in 
youth,  76 ;  Saxon  and  Latin,  85,  — 
use  of  by  Bryant,  85,  86;  Emerson's 
choice  of  words,  1 52 ;  Longfellow's 
later,  213 ;  Lowell's  peculiarities, 
315;  Whitman's  original,  378,  — 
his  Faulty  verbiage,  ib. 

Didacticism,  our  early  verse-makers, 
15  ;  of  the  Lake  School,  51 ;  con 
flict  with,  by  Poe,  etc.,  56,  249,  263 
not  in  Emerson's  verse,  150  ;  defini 
tion  of,  and  why  it  repels  us,  150 
and  see  450. 

Dietz,  Ella,  see  Clymer,  E.  D. 

Dilettanteism,  27. 

Dinsmore,  Robert  (1 757-1836),  116. 

Disciples,  Emerson's,  158;  Whit- 
man's, 360. 

Disraeli,  vulgarity  of  "  Lothair,"  261. 

Divine  Comedy,  The,  Longfellow's 
translation,  188,  —  reviewed,  209- 
213;  various  translations  of,  ib. ; 
qualities  essential  to  an  ideal  ver- 
sion, 210,  213  ;  and  see  Dante. 

Divines,  colonial,  34. 

Doane,   George    Washington    (1799- 

1859),  50- 
Dobson,  Austin,  342. 
Dodge,  Mary  Mapes  (1838-     ),  446. 
Domesticity,  American  homestead,  17, 

102  ;  home-life  depicted  by  the  East 


INDEX. 


487 


ern  poets,   49;  Longfellow's,   221; 

and  see  123. 
Domett,  Alfred,  415. 
Dore,  Gustave,  258. 
Dorgan,  John  Aylmere,  442. 
"  Dorothy,"  Munby's,  198,  454. 
"  Dorothy  Q.,"  Holmes's,  285. 
Dorr,  Julia  Caroline  Ripley  (1825-    ), 

SO- 
Doudan,  X.,  on  poverty,  268 ;  and  see 

347- 

Dovvden,  Edward,  on  Emerson,  178 ; 
on  Lowell,  305  ;  and  see  360. 

Drake,  Joseph  Rodman,  influence  on 
Halleck,  40 ;  and  see  39,  75,  280. 

Drama  and  Dramatists,  Godfrey's  work, 
33;  Tyler  and  Dunlap,  36;  Gris- 
wold  on,  57  ;  plays  of  Bird,  Conrad, 
Longfellow,  Willis,  Sargent,  Math- 
ews, and  Boker,  57  ;  merits  and  de- 
fects of  Longfellow's  dramatic  poe- 
try, 204-207  ;  rarity  of  the  dramatic 
gift,  204 ;  Taylor's  dramas,  428-432  ; 
poetry's  highest  form,  428  ;  requi- 
sites for  success  in,  429  ;  Fawcett, 
441  ;  dramas  by  Leighton,  Young, 
etc.,  454;  a  symptom  of  national 
maturity,  466 ;  present  need  and 
prospects  of,  466-469;  stage-plays, 
past  and  present,  466-468 ;  question 
of  text,  action,  and  accessories,  467  ; 
audience  and  playwright,  468 ; 
town-life  favorable  to  the  dramatic 
poet,  468  ;  recent  dramatists,  469. 

Dramatic  Quality,  absent  in  our  earlier 
periods,  66;  Emerson's  lack  of, 
JS6,  157  J  Lowell's,  341 ;  needed  for 
a  revival  of  interest  in  poetry,  466. 

Drayton,  Michael,  192. 

"  Drum-Taps,"  Whitman's,  362. 

Dryden,  89,  331,335. 

Duffield,  Samuel  Willoughby  (1843-   ), 

55,  443- 
Dulness,  Holmes  on,  292. 


"  Dunciad,  The,"  289. 
Dunlap,  William,  36,  466. 
Durand,  A.  B.,  46,  68. 
Duyckincks,     The     (Evert     A.    and 

George  L.),  32,  41. 
Dwight,  Timothy,  36,  325. 

Earnestness,  129;  strength  of  Low- 
ell's convictions,  312-314. 

"Earthly  Paradise,  The,"  Morris's, 
209. 

Eastman,  Charles  Gamage,  49. 

Eccentricity,  a  weakness  of  transcen- 
dental poetry,  167-169. 

Echo  Club,  The,  Taylor's,  422. 

Eclogues,  115. 

Edwards,  Jonathan,  34,  130,  296. 

Egan,  Maurice  Francis,  444. 

Eggleston,  Edward,  463. 

Egoism,  of  the  minor  transcendental - 
ists,  147;  dangers  of,  271;  Whit- 
man's, 390. 

Eighteenth-Century  Style,  Bryant's, 
70,  71  ;  Holmes's  a  survival,  not  a 
renaissance,  275,  276  ;  modern  a-la- 
mode  verse.  275 ;  knee-buckle  verse, 
281  ;  Dr.  Coles,  300. 

Elegiac  Poetry,  "The  North  Shore 
Watch,"  461. 

"  Elegy  on  a  Shell,"  Dr.  Mitchill's,  286. 

Elemental  quality,  characteristic  of 
Bryant's  verse,  81. 

Elizabethan  Period,  and  poets,  influ- 
ence of,  56,  469;  the  lyrists,  374; 
and  see  76,  188. 

Ellsworth,  Erastus  Wolcott,  52. 

Elsie  Venner,  Holmes's,  294. 

Embargo,  The,  Bryant's,  72. 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  his  landscape, 
47  ;  master  of  the  Concord  group, 
52  ;  eulogy  of  Bryant,  66 ;  review 
of  his  life,  philosophy,  and  works, 
133-179 ;  his  indecision  between  the 
methods  of  philosophy  and  art,  133, 


488 


INDEX. 


134;  ideal  prose  and  verse,  134;  his 
natural  disciples,  134;  felicity  of 
touch,  135;  a  single  purpose,  135; 
essentially  a  poet,  136;  office,  137; 
tributes  to  his  genius,  137  ;  order  of 
intellect,  137 ;  birth,  ancestry,  train- 
ing, 138;  early  Unitarianism,  138; 
retirement  from  the  Church,  138; 
after-life  and  career,  139 ;  pupils 
and  associates,  139 ;  Nature,  140 ; 
personal  traits  and  bearing,  140 ; 
death,  141 ;  his  philosophy  analyzed, 
141-147 ;  optimism,  141 ;  freedom 
from  dogma,  142 ;  an  idealist  and 
eclectic,  142  ;  morals,  142  ;  sense  of 
real  life,  142,  143 ;  Plato  his  early 
guide,  143 ;  his  likeness  to  Plotinus, 
144  ;  innate  wisdom,  145  ;  transcen- 
dental method,  146 ;  influence  on  pu- 
pils, 147 ;  a  liberator,  147 ;  considered 
as  a  poet,  148-17 1 ;  Poems,  1847, — 
May- Day  —  Poems,  1876,148;  view 
of  art,  148,  149  ;  "  Brahma  "  and  the 
universal  Soul,  149;  as  a  lyric  poet, 
1 50 ;  Margaret  Fuller's  criticism  on, 
150,  160;  not  "didactic,"  150;  on 
Nature's  hidden  trail,  151  ;  "Wood- 
notes,"  "Forerunners,"  151,  152; 
"The  Problem,"  "May-Day,"  152; 
genius  for  diction  and  epithet,  152, 
153 ;  scientific  intuition  and  pre- 
science, 153-155;  "The  Sphinx," 
153  ;  a  seer  of  evolution,  154  ;  view 
of  Science  and  Art,  155 ;  his  lim- 
itations, of  range,  passion,  action, 
155-157;  love-poetry,  157;  patriotic 
verse,  1 57  ;  a  layer  on  of  hands, 
158  ;  E.  and  Rossetti,  158  ;  metrical 
style,  1 58-161  ;  best  understood  by 
Americans,  159;  his  melody,  159; 
deficient  sense  of  proportion  and 
construction,  159;  a  nonconformist, 
160;  unique  lyrics,  160;  gift  for 
"  saying  things,"  161 ;  famous  pas- 


sages in  his  poems,  161-163  ;  rhyth- 
mical compression,  163 ;  lyrical 
freedom,  164,  165;  imaginative  ex- 
pression, ib.  ;  "  Threnody  "  and 
"  Merlin,"  165 ;  Emerson  and  Whit- 
man, 166;  his  favorite  poets  and 
measures,  166 ;  Orientalism,  167 ; 
blank-verse,  ib. ;  changes  observable 
in  his  style,  167-169;  early  blem- 
ishes, ib. ;  his  own  best  censor,  169- 
171 ;  his  artistic  canons,  170;  prose- 
writings,  171-176 ;  mutual  likeness  of 
his  prose  and  verse,  171 ;  his  essays 
compared  with  those  of  Bacon,  Car- 
lyle,  Lahdor,  Montaigne,  etc.,  171, 
172 ;  prose-style,  172-174 ;  apo- 
thegms, 172  ;  idiomatic  English, 
173  ;  rhythm  and  imagery  of  his 
prose,  173,  174;  secular  essays,  on 
the  Conduct  of  Life,  etc.,  175  ;  Par- 
nassus,  175  ;  summary  of  his  traits, 
176-179;  compared  with  Longfel- 
low, 177,  178  ;  his  conception  of  the 
future  bard,  179 ;  Holmes's  por- 
traiture of,  296;  Arnold  on,  297; 
view  of  Whitman,  349,  359 ;  influ- 
ence on  Whitman,  355,  —  on  the 
new  choir,  443;  and  see  12,  44,  98, 
106,  no,  116,  118,  129,  130,  180, 
216,  220,   223,  263,  279,  300,  304, 

336,  342,  35o»  35T>  363,  380,  389, 
390,  424,  436,  444,  457. 

Emersonian  School,  145-147,  168,  169. 

England,  Taine  on,  48. 

English,  Thomas  Dunn,  41. 

English  heroic  verse,  Holmes's  mas- 
tery of,  288-290,  —  his  opinion  of, 
289 ;  as  written  by  Chaucer,  Hunt, 
Keats,  Pope,  and  others,  289. 

English  Language,  the,  Bryant's  use 
of,  84;  consonantal  quality,  91; 
Emerson's  mastery  of,  1 73 ;  Lowell's 
English,  330,  331 ;  beauty,  strength, 
and  copiousness,  475 ;  and  see  411. 


INDEX. 


489 


English  Traits,  Emerson's,  171,  175; 
idiomatic  English  of,  173. 

Ennui,  a  national  characteristic,  9 ; 
the  nurse  of  invention,  273. 

"Enoch  Arden,"  Tennyson's,  117. 

Entailed  Hat,  The,  Townsend's,  298. 

Environment,  law  of,  3  ;  factors  mod- 
ifying it,  3 ;  early  American,  ad- 
verse to  ideality,  75 ;  Taylor's  early, 
398,— later,  416. 

Epic  quality,  of  "  Hiawatha,"  202. 

Epictetus,  142. 

Epicurus,  142. 

Epigrams,  Holmes's,  297;  Lowell's 
pointed  sayings,  332,  333. 

Epithets,  Emerson  the  master  of,  153, 
164,  165 ;  Whitman's,  379. 

Equipment,  Poe's,  260,  261 ;  Taylor's, 
410. 

Essays,  Lowell's,  330-338;  and  see 
Emerson,  R.  W. 

Essays  (First  and  Second  Series),  Em- 
erson's, 171. 

Esther,  de  Kay's,  442. 

Ethics,  Longfellow's,  221. 

"  Euphorion,"  Taylor's,  413. 

Eureka,  Poe's,  262. 

Evangel,  The,  Coles's,  300. 

Evangeline,  Longfellow's,  scenic  and 
idyllic,  20;  reviewed,  195-201; 
choice,  management,  and  success  of 
its  measure,  195-199;  Poe  on,  196; 
Arnold  on,  197,  198;  the  flower  of 
American  idyls,  200,  201  ;  and  see 
90,  117,  216,426,457. 

"  Evening  Revery,  An,"  Bryant's,  93. 

Everett,  Edward,  on  Bryant's  poetry, 
78  ;  and  see  138,  283. 

Evolution,  153,  154. 
Expression,  all  modes  free  to  the  poet, 
373;  when  involved,  in  Taylor,  412. 
Extravagance,  of  genius,  389. 

Fable  for  Critics,  A,  Lowell's,  325. 


Facility,  Taylor's,  412. 

Faith,  essential  to  high  art,  128. 

"  Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher,  The," 
Poe's,  237  ;  compared  to  Brown- 
ing's "  Childe  Roland,"  258. 

Fame,  at  its  best,  137;  Longfellow's, 
208 ;  Poe's,  225,  227  ;  as  affected 
by  biographers  and  critics,  265 ; 
measured  in  the  end  by  actual  prod- 
uct, 272  ;  contemporary  judgment 
difficult,  274  ;  fame,  reputation,  no- 
toriety, etc.,  Whitman's,  349,  350, 

394- 

Fancy,  Bryant's,  83;  Whittier's,  119; 
Holmes's,  281. 

Fantasy,  Poe's  use  of  the  fantastic,  258. 

Fantasy  and  Passion,  Fawcett's,  441. 

Fashion,  in  Art,  39 ;  Whittier's  style, 
1 10  ;  its  law,  and  effect  on  Art,  273 ; 
Whitman's  revival  of  the  prophetic 
dithyramb,  371 ;  ephemeral  vogue 
of  novel  forms,  460;  demand  for 
prose  fiction,  463. 

Faust,  Taylor's  Translation  of,  422- 
425  ;  rapid  execution,  422  ;  its 
method,  423 ;  characteristics,  423  ; 
the  "  Dedication,"  id.  ;  notes,  com- 
mentary, etc.,  424  ;  and  see  204. 

Fawcett,  Edgar,  his  Fantasy  and  Pas- 
sion, Song  and  Story,  etc.,  441. 

Felicitous  passages,  examples  from 
Emerson,  161-163. 

Female  Poets,  American,  early  group, 
50,  — a  Scotch  critic  on,  444,  —  their 
relative  position,  444,  —  compared 
with  British,  444,  — general  advance, 
445,  —  enumeration  of,  445-447,  — 
unaffected  quality,  447;  their  rela- 
tive excellence  a  feature,  458. 

Fessenden,    Thomas    Green    (1771 

1837),  323,  455- 

Fiction,  Prose.  See  Novels  and  Nov- 
elists. 

Fields,  Annie  Adams  (1834-  ),  51,  445 


490 


INDEX. 


Fields,  James  Thomas,  59. 

Filicaja,  a  sonnet  by,  214. 

Finch,  Francis  Miles  ( 1827-     ),  49. 

Fireside  Travels,  Lowell's,  327,  329. 

First  Books,  291. 

FitzGerald,  Edward,  184. 

Fletcher,  Andrew,  on  national  songs, 

35- 

Folk-lore,  102 ;  meagreness  of,  in  the 
New  World,  21. 

Foote,  Mary  Hallock,  463. 

Force,  conservation  of,  153. 

Ford,  translator  of  Dante,  210,  212. 

Foreign  Opinion,  how  far  insincere,  8 ; 
Dowden  on  Lowell,  etc.,  305;  our 
debt  to  foreign  critics,  473. 

Form,  value  of,  in  translation,  90 ;  fa- 
vorite measures  of  Emerson,  167; 
poetic  forms,  Whitman's  outcry 
against  those  familiar,  372,  —  ra- 
tionale of  the  latter,  373,  —  depen- 
dent on  time,  accent,  rhythm,  etc., 
and  based  in  nature,  372,  —  Goe- 
the on,  373,  —  Milton  on  rhyme, 
374,  —  blank-verse,  374,  —  question 
of  their  endurance,  377,  —  genius 
master  of  all  forms,  377  ;  Poe's  use 
of  simple  ballad-forms,  251 ;  all 
forms  included  in  the  dramatic,  428 ; 
and  see  French  Forms. 

Formalism,  excessive  in  Whitman,  377, 
386. 

Foster,  John,  311. 

Foster,  Stephen  Collins  (1826-64),  49, 

455- 
Fouque,  252. 
Fourier,  360. 

"  Francesca  da  Rimini,"  Boker's,  468. 
Franchise,  of  the  poet,  155,  156. 
Franklin,  305;  Holmes  compared  to, 

291. 
"Freeman,  The,"  105. 
Freiligrath,  423. 
"French  Forms,"  no,  276. 


I  French  quality  and  influence,  440,  441 ; 
Poe  affected  by,  261. 

Freneau,  Philip,  35,  36. 

Frere,  John  Hookham,  277,  443. 

"  Frontenac,"  Parkman's,  97. 

Frothingham,  Ellen  (1835-     ),  55. 

Frothingham,  Nathaniel  Langdon, 
(1 793-1 870),  50. 

Frothingham,  Octavius  Brooks, 
quoted,  101. 

Fuller,  Sarah  Margaret,  on  Emerson, 
150,  160,  164;  her  "Tribune"  crit- 
icisms, 256;  and  see  52,  139,  175. 

"  Future,  Poetry  of  the,"  cannot  now 
be  produced  upon  a  theory,  375. 

Future  of  American  Poetry,  the,  61, 476. 

Gallagher,  William  Davis,  49. 

Garrison,  William  Lloyd,  fellowship 
with  Whittier,  etc.,  103-106 ;  Whit- 
tier's  poem  on,  122;  and  see  130. 

Gautier,  441. 

Gay,  342. 

Genius,  its  exceptional  quality,  3 ;  la- 
tent, 15;  need  of  excitants,  15;  san- 
ity of  Bryant's,  64;  aided  by  cul- 
ture, 109,  306;  Emerson  on,  145; 
influence  of  Nature  on,  156;  more 
than  a  talent  for  work,  187;  tests 
of,  191;  interest  aroused  by,  226; 
priceless  rarity  of,  269 ;  is  it  a  neu- 
rotic disorder,  270  ;  quality  of 
Holmes's,  302 ;  its  self-culture,  307  ; 
Lowell's  many-sided  and  original, 
347 ;  is  consistent,  368 ;  adapts  it- 
self to  all  languages  and  forms,  377  ; 
paradoxical,  392,  393;  and  see  433, 
438. 

Genre,  lyrics  and  idyls,  Longfellow's, 
216 ;  Whitman's  work,  380. 

"  George  Eliot."     See  Cross. 

Georgian  Period,  194,  275,  276. 

German  influence,  on  Longfellow,  187; 
on  Taylor,  422. 


INDEX. 


491 


German  Language,  91. 
"Gesta  Romanorum,"  215. 
Gifford,  R.  Swain,  46. 
Gifford,  Sanford  R.,  46. 
Gilder,   Richard   Watson,    The  New 
Day,  442  ;  artistic  purpose,  ib. ;  The 
Poet  and  his  Master,  ib. ;   quoted, 
470. 
Godfrey,  Thomas,  33. 
Godwin,  Parke,  on  blank-verse,  374 ; 

and  see  400. 
Godwin,  William,  252. 
Goethe,  and  Longfellow,  206 ;  quoted, 
221 ;  on  the  value  of  poetic  forms, 
373;  and  see  129,  147,  153,  155,  338» 
420,  422. 
Golden  Legend,  The,  Longfellow's,  re- 
viewed, 205-207. 
Goldsmith,  71,  115,  120,  288,  327. 
Goodale,  Dora  Read  (1866-     ),  447. 
Goodale,  Elaine  (1863-     ),  447. 
Gookin,  Daniel,  34. 
Gothic  Feeling.     See  Medievalism. 
Graham,  George  R.,  265,  266,  400. 
"  Graham's  Magazine,"  236,  400. 
Grant,  Robert,  443. 
Gray,  Thomas,  quoted,  65;  and  see 

239,  277. 
"  Greece,"  Wordsworth's,  quoted,  53. 
Greek  Bucolic  Poets,  89. 
Greek  Language,  of  Homer,  85-91. 
Greeley,  Horace,  on  Whittier,  95 ;  and 

see  99,  400,  402- 
Green,  Joseph,  (1706-80),  277. 
Greene,  G.  W.,  210,  213. 
Greenfield  Hill,  Dwight's,  36. 
Greenough,    Sarah    Dana  Loring 

(1827-  ),  50. 
Grimm,  Hermann,  on  Emerson,  134. 
Griswold,  Rufus  Wilmot,  32 ;  satirized 
by  Lowell,  43 ;  his  sketches  of  au- 
thors, 256 ;  his  Memoir  and  Edition 
of  Poe,  265 ;  and  see  40,  41, 325,  399, 
400. 


Grote,  91. 

Grotesque,  the,  Poe's  passion  for,  259. 
Guardian  Angel,  The,  Holmes's,  294. 
Guiney,  Louise  Imogen  (1861-    ),  447. 

Hadley,  James,  on  Homeric  transla- 
tion, 89;  on  hexameter,  197. 

Hafiz,  167,  279. 

Halleck,  Fitz-Greene,  a  natural  lyrist, 
40  ;  and  see  39,  75,  280. 

Halpine,  Charles  Graham  ("Miles 
O'Reilly  ")  (1829-68),  59,  444- 

"Hamadryad,  The,"  Landor's,  311, 
404. 

Hanging  of  the  Crane,  Longfellow's, 
207. 

Hannah  Thurston,  Taylor's,  421. 

"Hans  Breitmann,"  Leland's  ballads 

of,  455- 

Harmony,  natural,  Whitman  on,  375; 
and  see  Rhythm. 

Harney,  William  Wallace,  453. 

Harris,  Joel  Chandler,  455. 

Harte,  Francis  Bret,  poetry  of,  451 ; 
and  see  159,  201,  285,  403,  455,  463- 

Harvard  University,  its  early  and 
modern  sentiment,  308;  Lowell's 
ode,  343  ;  and  see  277,  278. 

"  Haunted  Palace,  The,"  Poe's,  247. 

Hawthorne,  treatment  of  colonial 
themes,  205;  compared  with  Poe, 
254,  —  with  Holmes,  294;  and  see 
no,  183,  229,238,263,325. 

Hawthorne,  Julian,  463. 

Hawtrey,  Dean,  his  hexameters,  196; 
and  see  89. 

Hay,  John,  poems  of,  and  dialect-verse, 
453  ;  and  see  455. 

Hayne,  Paul  Hamilton,  54,  440,  451- 

Hazeltine,  Mayo  Williamson,  cited,  65. 

"  Hebe,"  Lowell's,  316. 

Hebraism,  Whittier's,  130;  Whit- 
man's, 353,  371  ;  Miss  Lazarus's 
poetry,  447. 


492 


INDEX. 


Hedge,  Frederic  Henry  (1805-     ),  50. 

Heine,  translations  of,  by  Leland,  Laz- 
arus, 55,  447  ;  influence  on  Longfel- 
low, 186,  188  ;  and  see  146,  227,  263, 

459- 
"  Hellenics,"  Landor's,  404. 
Hemans,  Mrs.,  43,  112,  399. 
"  Hermann  and  Dorothea,"  Goethe's, 

117. 
"  Hermes,  Paul."     See  Thayer,  W.  R. 
Hermes,  Thayer's,  444. 
Heroism,  a  quality,  not  a  sentiment,  in 

Americans,  31. 
Hesiod,  175,  379. 
Hesperus,  de  Kay's,  442. 
Hexameter,  Greek,  aristocratic  quality, 

87  ;  splendor,  88  ;  rhythmus  of,  88- 

90. 
Hexameter,     English,     Longfellow's, 

195-199;  pleasing  to   popular  ear, 

195,  199;  wrongly  discussed  from 
the  scholar's  point  of  view,  195-197  ; 
Swinburne  on,  195,  196  ;  Kingsley's, 

196,  198;  Poe's  strictures,  196; 
Lord  Derby's,  196;  discussed  by 
Lewis,  Bryant,  Lang,  Hadley,  Low- 
ell, Higginson,  Stoddard,  etc.,  197, 
198 ;  recent  poems  in,  197,  198 ; 
accent  and  quantity,  198 ;  Canning 
on,  198  ;  Taylor's,  198,  426;  ultimate 
characteristics,  198  ;  Biblical  hexam- 
eters, 199;  and  see  89-91. 

u  H.  H."     See  Helen  M.  F.  Jackson. 

Hiawatha,  Longfellow's,  reviewed, 
201-203 ;  measure  of,  201,  202 ; 
modelled  on  "  Kalevala,"  201  ;  suc- 
cessful handling  of  the  Indian  tradi- 
tions, 202  ;  management  of  Indian 
dialect  and  names,  202 ;  and  see 
in. 

Hicks,  Thomas,  his  portrait  of  Taylor, 
406. 

Higginson,  Francis,  34. 

Higginson,    Thomas    Wentworth,  on 


English  hexameter,  197 ;  on  Poe 
and  Miss  Fuller,  256 ;  and  see  52. 

Hillard,  George,  41. 

Hillhouse,  James  Abraham,  38 

Hoffman,  Charles  Fenno,  41. 

Hoffman,  Ernst,  252. 

Hogarth,  275. 

Holland,  Josiah  Gilbert,  49,  360. 

Holmes,  Abiel,  279. 

Holmes,  Oliver  Wendell,  Dean  of  our 
"occasional"  poets,  59;  review  of 
his  career  and  writings,  273-303 ; 
effect  of  current  taste  on  his  popu- 
larity, 274  ;  a  poet  of  the  old  school, 
275;  leader  of  his  class,  276;  vi- 
vacity, 276 ;  a  University  poet,  276, 
277;  disperser  of  Puritan  gloqm, 
277;  wit  and  humorist,  277;  birth 
and  training,  278,  279 ;  buoyant  na- 
ture, 278 ;  "  The  Collegian,"  279  ; 
likeness  to  Dr.  Mitchill,  279 ;  early 
verse,  280 ;  "  Old  Ironsides,"  "  The 
Last  Leaf,"  etc.,  280,  281  ;  personal 
traits,  281  ;  songs  and  ballads,  282, 
283  ;  rhymed  Addresses,  283  ;  Poe- 
try, a  Metrical  Essay,  etc.,  283; 
Class  -  Poems,  283  ;  Boston's  lau- 
reate, 284 ;  society-verse,  284,  285  ; 
his  most  ideal  poems,  286 ;  traits  of 
his  "  occasional  pieces,"  287  ;  eigh- 
teenth-century style  and  thought, 
288-290 ;  use  of  the  rhymed-pentam- 
eter, 288,  289 ;  his  distinctive  gift, 
290  ;  prose  writings,  291-297  ;  Auto- 
crat of  the  Breakfast-  Table,  291,  292 ; 
the  "  Atlantic  Monthly,"  293 ;  Pro- 
fessor at  the  Breakfast-Table,  and 
Poet  at  the  Breakfast-Table,  294; 
his  novels,  Elsie  Venner,  etc.,  294, 
295  ;  their  realism,  satire,  etc.,  295  ; 
an  independent  thinker,  295;  Mis- 
cellaneous Essays,  296;  portrayal 
of  Emerson,  296 ;  epigrammatist  and 
proverb-maker,  297  ;  his  views,  298 ; 


INDEX. 


493 


conservatism,  loyalty,  and  ancestral 
feeling,  298-300 ;  personal  magnet- 
ism, 300 ;  seventieth  birthday,  300  ; 
charm  of  his  recitations,  301  ;  final 
estimate  of,  302,  303  ;  and  see  51, 
no,  112,  129,  439.448. 
Homer,  qualities  of  text,  84-91  ;  dic- 
tion, 87  ;  dactylic  lines,  88  ;  rhythm 
and  movement,  88-90 ;  and  see  175, 

423- 
Homeric  translations,  Bryant's,  83; 
Derby's,  Hunt's,  etc.,  84 ;  Tenny- 
son's, 86;  by  Chapman,  Pope, 
Hawtrey,  Butcher  and  Lang,  etc., 
88,  89 ;  opinions  of  Hadley  and 
Arnold,  89,  —  of  Prof.  Lewis,  90  ; 
inefficacy  of  blank-verse,  86-91  ;  fit- 
ness of  "  English  hexameter,"  90, 
91 ;  Lord  Derby's,  91  ;  Voss's  Iliad, 
91 ;  Longfellow  on,  189  ;  Longfellow 
not  fitted  for,  199 ;  and  see  197,  332. 

Home  Pastorals,  Taylor's,  426. 

Home-School,  American,  question  of 
its  existence,  4;  characteristics,  4- 
1 1 ;  a  growth,  6 ;  foreign  view  of,  8, 
9 ;  local  sub-divisions,  9 ;  its  first  pe- 
riod clearly  defined,  1 1  ;  advent  of, 
30;  growth  of,  31-61  ;  earliest 
promise,  37;  mistaken  efforts  to- 
ward, 42  ;  final  evolution,  44 ;  should 
be  rightly  estimated,  60;  its  first 
course  ended,  60 ;  Whitman's  denial 
of,  60  ;  Bryant  its  early  master,  82. 

Homilies  in  verse,  Longfellow's,  190. 

Homogeneity,  American,  5-10, 96,  97, 

474- 
Hood,  Thomas,  108,  287,  462. 
Hooker,  Thomas,  130. 
Hopkinson,  Joseph  (1770-1842),   his 

"  Hail  Columbia,"  36. 
Home,  R.  H.,  415. 
Houghton,     George     Washington 

Wright,  443. 
Howard,  Blanche  Willis,  463. 


Howard,  Bronson  (1842-    ),  469. 

"  Howard  Glyndon."  See  Searing, 
L.R. 

Howe,  Julia  Ward,  49,  360. 

Howells,  Elizabeth  Lloyd  (18-    ),  50. 

Howells,  William  Dean,  his  "  Clem- 
ent," 197  ;  compared  with  Holmes. 
295 ;  and  see  210,  440,  462,  463. 

Howland,  George  (1824-    ),  55,  454. 

Hoyt,  Ralph,  41. 

Hudibras,  35,  325. 

Hudson,  Mary  Ann  Clemmer  (1839- 

84),  5°»  446. 

Hugo,  Victor,  cited,  49,  67;  "Con- 
flicts "  with  Nature,  etc.,  67 ;  and 
see  3 si,  385.  389,  468. 

Humor,  of  "The  Croakers,"  40;  of 
American  poets,  59;  absent  from 
Bryant's  verse  —  characteristic  of 
his  speech,  70;  Poe  deficient  in, 
258 ;  characteristics  of  genuine,  259 ; 
Poe's  theory  of,  259;  "graveyard" 
humor,  260;  Holmes's,  277,  280; 
its  tenure  in  art,  321  ;  Poe's  and 
Lowell's,  332. 

Humorous  Verse,  Holmes's,  290; 
Taylor's,  422  ;  Harte's,  452  ;  Hay's, 
453 ;  and  see  Burlesque  and  Parody. 

Hunt,  Leigh,  84,  89,  214,  289,  311,  407. 

Hutchinson,   Ellen   Mackay   (18-     ), 

447- 
"  Hylas,"  Taylor's,  404. 
Hymnology,  see  Religious  Verse. 
Hyperion,  Longfellow's,  reviewed,  185, 

186 ;  and  see  204. 

Iambic-quatrain    Verse,    Bryant's, 

78,  79- 

"Ichabod,"  Whittier's,  122. 

Ideal,  The,  love  of,  a  restraint  on  sen- 
suality, 266;  the  American,  473; 
and  see  Aspiration. 

Ideality,  how  retarded,  n,  12,  et  seq. ; 
incomplete  Republicanism  opposed 


494 


INDEX. 


to  it,  1 6,  17  ;  of  Emerson's  prose 
and  verse,  134;  Longfellow's,  182; 
popularity  dangerous  to,  293 ;  pres- 
ent neglect  of,  458 ;  now  diverted  to 
prose  fiction,  461. 

Idyllic  Verse,  "  Evangeline  "  the  type 
and  flower  of  our,  200 ;  Longfellow's 
free -hand  idyls,  207;  Whitman's, 
380;  Snider's  Delphic  Days,  454; 
Munby's  "Dorothy,"  ib.;  public 
satiated  with,  464  ;  and  see  117. 

Idyls  of  the  King,  Tennyson's,  202. 

Imagery,  Emerson's,  161-163,  174; 
Longfellow's  use  of  metaphors,  etc., 
214. 

Imagination,  Stoddard's,  58 ;  Bryant's 
elemental  type,  81,  82 ;  Whittier's, 
119;  Longfellow's,  191 ;  Poe's  not  of 
the  highest  order,  258 ;  constructive, 
336;  Whitman's,  exemplified,  380, 
381 ;  Alden  on  Whitman's,  381  ; 
recent  lack  of,  459. 

Impulse,  335. 

Indecency,  outlawed  of  Art,  366; 
Whitman's  alleged,  367 ;  not  a  mark 
of  virility,  369 ;  and  see  Realism. 

Indian,  American,  cockney  ideals  of, 
42;  poetry  of,  Whittier,  in  ;  Long- 
fellow's "  Hiawatha,"  201  -  203 ; 
Schoolcraft,  202;  of  the  Knicker- 
bocker poets,  202. 

Indifferentism,  recent,  309. 

Individuality,  Lowell's,  328,  337 ; 
Whitman's,  362.       4fc; 

Induction,  Poetic,  262. 

Infertility,  Bryant's,  70;  of  Poe's  lyri- 
cal genius,  240. 

Inflexibility  and  stiffness,  Bryant's,  69. 

Ingelow,  Jean,  112. 

Ingram,  John  H.,  memoir  of  Poe,  265. 

Inland  States,  poets  and  poetry  of  the, 
452-454- 

"In  Memoriam,"  Tennyson's,  195; 
stanzaic  form  of,  ib. 


Inness,  George,  46,  68. 

Inspiration,  belief  in,  by  Whittier  and 

Mrs.   Browning,    129;    Emerson's, 

176,  177  ;  and  see  472. 
Intellectual   Power,  Emerson's,  176; 

essential  to  a  great  poet,  253 ;  qual- 
ity of  Poe's  intellect,  254. 
"  In  the  Twilight,"  Lowell's,  339. 
Invention,    and    tradition,    179;    vs. 

Taste,  239 ;  limits  of  Poe's,  253. 
"Inward  Light,"  the,  Whittier's,  127- 

129. 
Irish-American  Poets,  444. 
Irving,    Washington,   edits    Bryant's 

poems,  J2  >  and  see  39,  40,  401. 
Isolation,  "  scholar-gypsies,"  454. 
"  Israfel,"  Poe's,  248. 
Italian  Influence,  442. 

Jackson,    Helen     Maria    Fiske 

("H.H.")  (1831-85),  445. 

James,  Henry,  Jr.,  on  the  Emerson- 
ians,  169;  and  see  156,  462,  463. 

Jennison,  Lucy  White  ("  Owen  Inns- 
ley")  (1850-    ),447. 

Jewett,  Sarah  Orne,  463. 

John  Godfrey 's  Fortune,  Taylor's,  421. 

Johnson,  Capt.  Edward,  34. 

Johnson,  Oliver,  on  Whittier,  131. 

Johnson,  Samuel  (1822-82),  50. 

Johnston,  Richard  Malcolm,  451. 

Jonson,  Ben,  167,  392. 

Journalism,  and  ideality,  27,  29 ;  Bry- 
ant's case,  63,  —  effect  of,  on  his 
genius,  74,  75;  Whittier's,  103-105, 
108;  effect  of,  on  authorship,  233; 
Taylor's  case,  417 ;  its  aid  to  the 
poet,  471;  and  see  326,  397,  437. 

Journey-work,  often  harmful  to  genius,' 
294 ;  and  see  Market,  Literary. 

Joyce,  Robert  Dwyer,  444. 

Judd,  Sylvester,  49. 

Judson,  Emily  Chubbuck  (1817-54), 
50- 


INDEX. 


495 


"Kalevala,"  the  Finnish  epic,  201. 
Kavanagh,  Longfellow's,    its    moral, 

etc.,  187;  quoted,  218,  219. 
Keats,  on  Beauty  and  Truth,  263 ;  and 

see  39,  76,  89,  249,  250,  286,  289, 

311,312,319,332,402,459. 
Kennedy,   John  Pendleton,  on   Poe, 

252;  and  see  41,  265. 
Kensett,  J.  F.,  68. 
Keramos,  Longfellow's,  207. 
Key,  Francis  Scott  (1779-1843),  "The 

Star-Spangled  Banner,"  36. 
Kimball,  Harriet  McEwen  (1834-    ), 

50. 

King,  Edward,  443. 

King,  Bishop  Henry,  165. 

Kingsley,  his  "  Andromeda,"  90 ;  his 
fine  hexameter-verse,  196,  198. 

Kinney,  Elizabeth  Clementine 
(1810-    ),  50. 

Kip,  Leonard,  463. 

Knickerbocker  Poets  —  pseudo  -  In- 
dian Verse,  202  ;  and  see  39-43. 

Knowles,  Sheridan,  468. 

Kossuth,  290. 

"Lady  Geraldine's  Courtship," 
Mrs.  Browning's,  and  "  The  Raven," 

245- 

Lake  School,  the,  51,  249,  313. 

Lamb,  43. 

Landor,  Walter  Savage,  36,  70,  83, 
137.  167,  172,  249,  267,  289,  308,  311, 
327,  338,  346,  366,  374,  38S,  404. 

Landon,  Miss,  43. 

Landscape,  see  Descriptive  Poetry. 

Lang,  Andrew,  on  hexameter  verse, 
197 ;  translations  of  Homer  and 
Theocritus,  210;  and  see  89. 

Language,  Poe  on  the  power  of,  257. 

Lanier,  Clifford  Anderson  (1844-    ), 

455- 
Lanier,  Sidney,  notice  of  his  poetry 
and  genius,  449-451;    early    vein, 


449;  his  theory,  450;  symphonic 
compcsitions,  ib.  ;  Science  of  Eng- 
lish Verse,  451 ;  and  see  54,  455. 

"  Laocoon,"  Lessing's,  449. 

Larcom,  Lucy  (1826-    ),  50,  445. 

Lars,  Taylor's  narrative  poem,  425. 

"  Last  Leaf,  The,"  Holmes's,  285. 

Lathrop,  George  Parsons,  442,  463. 

Latinism,  Bryant's,  85,  91 ;  Lowell's, 

33i- 

Law,  the,  and  Literature,  279. 

Law,  the  Reign  of,  298. 

Lazarus,  Emma  (1849-  )>  transla- 
tions, 447  ;  The  Dance  of  Death,  ib. ; 
and  see  55. 

Learning,  affectation  of,  by  Poe,  260 ; 
Holmes    on,   294;    Lowell's,   331- 

333- 
Legend  of  Brittany,  Lowell's,  31 1. 

Leighton,  William,  his  Dramas,  454. 

Leland,  Charles  Godfrey,  translations 
of  Heine,  55 ;  and  see  59,  455. 

Length  of  a  Poem,  Poe's  canon,  249. 

Lessing,  336,  449. 

Letters,  Men  of,  —  Lowell  our  repre- 
sentative of,  304. 

Letters  and  Social  Aims,  Emerson's, 
172. 

Lewes,  George  Henry,  422,  425. 

Lewis,  Charlton  T.,  on  blank-verse 
and  hexameter,  90;  on  hexameter, 
197. 

"Liberator,  The,"  Garrison's,  103. 

"  Liberty,"  Hay's,  453. 

Life-School;  Whitman,  380;  need 
and  promise  of,  in  poetry,  464-467  ; 
success  of,  in  prose  fiction,  464  ;  and 
see  Drama  and  Dramatists. 

"Ligeia,"  Poe's,  237,  272. 

Light  of  Asia,  Arnold's,  causes  of  its 

success,  465  ;  and  see  Buddhism. 
Limitations,  Bryant's,  66,  69-71 ;  Em- 
erson's, 155;  over-respect  for,  461. 
Lincoln,  Lowell's  portrait    of,  344; 


496 


INDEX. 


Whitman's  "  Burial  Hymn,"  364,  — 
his  lecture  and  poem  on,  391,  392  ; 
and  see  335. 

"Lines  on  a  Great  Man  Fallen," 
Lord's,  123. 

Linton,  William  James,  portrait  of 
Whitman,  362 ;  and  see  360. 

Literary  Centres,  New  England,  27  5 
New  York,  39,  416. 

"  Literary  Gazette,  The,"  188. 

Literary  Life,  Poe's  typical  of  his 
period,  233-236,  238  ;  restrictions 
of,  331  ;  Taylor's  Arcadian  days, 
403  ;  divided  ambition,  409  ;  and 
see  281. 

Literary  Periods,  their  sequence,  437  ; 
and  see  Elizabethan  Period,  etc.,  etc. 

Literary  Spirit,  Longfellow's,  184. 

Literary  Verse,  Longfellow's  excess 
of,  215,  —  Browning's,  id. 

"  Literati,"  the,  characteristics  of,  42  ; 
Poe's  criticisms  examined,  256;  and 
see  416. 

Literature,  American,  Taylor  in  con- 
nection with  recent  movement,  396. 

"Living  Temple,  The,"  Holmes's, 
286,  292. 

Liszt,  effect  of  society  on,  468. 

Locke,  145. 

Lodge,  Thomas,  374. 

Long,  John  Davis  (1838-    ),  55. 

Longevity,  effect  of  Bryant's,  65,  66, 
72. 

Longfellow,  Henry  Wadsworth,  cen- 
tre of  the  Cambridge  group,  51  ; 
translation  of  Dante,  55  ;  influenced 
by  Bryant,  72;  rural  verse,  115; 
sense  of  his  loss,  137 ;  L.  and  Em- 
erson, 177,  178  ;  review  of  his 
works  and  career,  180-224;  for- 
tunate in  life  and  death,  180;  his 
mission  apostolic,  180 ;  fresh  charm 
of  his  early  work,  181,  182;  his 
genius  non-creative,  but  fostering, 


182;  a  poet  of  Taste  and  Senti- 
ment, 182,  183 ;  birth,  at  an  au- 
spicious time,  183,  184  ;  apprentice- 
ship, 184 ;  "  Coplas  de  Manrique," 
184  ;  prose  romances,  etc.,  185-188 ; 
Outre- Mer,  185 ;  Hyperion,  185,  186, 
328 ;  influenced  by  Richter  and 
Heine,  186;  Kavanagh,  187;  a  ro- 
manticist, 187  ;  Poetry  of  Europe, 
188;  Poems  of  Places,  188;  poetical 
writings,  188-214;  juvenile  poems, 
188  ;  Voices  of  the  Night,  188, 189  ; 
early  translations,  189 ;  Ballads  and 
Other  Poems,  and  later  lyrical  col- 
lections, 189-194 ;  his  sentiment, 
taste,  and  picturesqueness,  190 ; 
anti-slavery  poems,  191  ;  imagina- 
tion, 191  ;  "  Skeleton  in  Armor," 
191,  192  ;  "  occasional  poems,"  192, 
193  ;  metrical  expertness,  193;  "My 
Lost  Youth,"  194;  narrative-pieces, 
194;  Evangeline,  195-201 ;  his 
choice,  use,  and  defence,  of  "  Eng- 
lish hexameter "  verse,  195-199 ; 
criticised  by  Poe,  196 ;  Arnold  on, 
198 ;  remarks  to  Macrae,  199 ;  Hia- 
watha, 201-203 ;  successful  treat- 
ment of  the  Indian  legends,  202  ; 
Courtship  of  Miles  Standish,  203 ; 
his  dramatic  works,  204-207 ;  The 
Spanish  Student,  204 ;  Pandora, 
204 ;  Christus,  204 ;  his  dramatic 
shortcomings,  and  Tennyson's,  204 ; 
The  Golden  Legend,  205-207  ;  Gothic 
sympathies,  205 ;  Michael  Angelo, 
207 ;  a  representative  volume,  The 
Seaside  and  the  Fireside,  207  ;  Hang- 
ing of  the  Crane  and  Keramos,  207  ; 
Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn,  208,  209 ;  , 
as  a  raconteur,  compared  with  Mor- 
ris, ib. ;  translation  of  The  Divine 
Comedy,  reviewed,  209-213, — 
method  employed,  209,  —  merits  and 
defects,  211-213;  his  masterly  Son- 


INDEX. 


/497 


nets,  213;  Ultima  Thule,  214;  his 
habits,  mannerism,  moralizing, 
bookishness,  214,  215;  "Morituri 
Salutamus,"  215;  a  poet  of  the 
study,  216,  —  yet  also  our  poet  of  the 
sea,  217  ;  question  of  his  originality, 
217,  218;  cosmopolitanism,  218; 
idea  of  a  national  literature,  218, 
219;  a  pioneer  of  taste,  220;  in 
what  sense  "a  poet  of  the  middle 
classes,"  220 ;  ethics  and  domestic- 
ity, 221  ;  lack  of  passion  and  dra- 
matic insight,  221-223;  Fortune's 
favorite,  222 ;  a  sympathetic  voice, 
222 ;  a  lovable  character,  223 ;  ar- 
tistic tact,  223 ;  final  estimate  of  his 
poetry,  224 ;  his  death,  224 ;  Poe's 
attack  on,  257;  and  see  12,43,49, 
70,  90,  96,  97,  106,  108,  in,  114, 
136,  152,  213,  277,  350,  390,  408,409, 
412,  436,  452,  457,  459,  473- 

Longfellow,  Samuel  (18 19-    ),  50. 

Lord,  William  Wilberforce,  41,  123. 

Loring,  Frederic  Wadsworth  (1849- 
71),  448. 

Love-poetry,  Whittier  lacking  in,  121 ; 
Emerson's,  157;  Lowell's,  310. 

Lowell,  James  Russell,  on  the  "  Lit- 
erati "  and  Griswold's  flock,  42,  43 ; 
his  landscape,  47  ;  satires,  59 ;  on 
Emerson,  136;  on  hexameter,  197; 

^review  of  his  works  and  career,  304- 
348 ;  our  representative  man  of  let- 
ters and  culture,  304 ;  Dr.  Dowden 
on,  305  ;  special  standing,  306  ;  his 
catholicity,  306 ;  parentage  and 
breeding,  307 ;  at  Harvard,  308, 
309;  A  Year's  Life,  309;  early 
range  and  tendencies,  310;  edits 
The  Pioneer,  310  ;  marriage  to  Miss 
White,  311  ;  Poems,  311  ;  "Legend 
of  Brittany"  and  "  Rhcecus,"  311, 
312  ;  progressive  views  and  poetry, 
312,  313;  Poems  (1848),  etc.,  313- 


320 ;  metrical  style,  314 ;  lyrical 
beauty,  31 5 ;  his  theory  of  song,  316 ; 
a  poet  of  nature  and  the  open  air, 
317;  pastoral  tastes,  318;  "To  the 
Dandelion,"  319  ;  The  Vision  of  Sir 
Launfal,  319;  estimate  of  his  work 
thus  far,  320;  The  Biglow  Papers, 
321-325,  —  their  wit  and  humor, 
321,  —  originality,  322,  —  second  se- 
ries of,  323,  — pathos,  324,  —  unique- 
ness, 325 ;  "  The  Courtin',"  323  ; 
A  Fable  for  Critics,  325  ;  his  prose 
writings,  326-338 ;  Conversations, 
326  ;  edits  the  "  Atlantic "  and 
"  North  American,"  326 ;  Fireside 
Travels  —  Among  My  Books  —  My 
Study  Windows,  —  etc.,  327  ;  prose 
style  and  quality,  327-330,  the 
strictures  on,  328;  his  greater  es- 
says, 330  ;  caprice,  331  ;  reading 
and  equipment,  331  ;  Lowell  and 
Poe,  332  ;  theory  of  translation, 
332;  point  and  wisdom,  332-334; 
critical  faculty  and  essays,  334-338 ; 
literary  wealth  and  freedom,  337, 
338 ;  Under  the  Willows,  and  later 
poems,  338-346;  Lowell,  Clough, 
and  Arnold,  339,  341 ;  "  In  the  Twi- 
light," 339  ;  his  culture,  341  ;  The 
Cathedral,  342 ;  his  manner,  343 ; 
Commemoration  Ode,  343  ;  Three 
Memorial  Poems,  344,  345;  "The 
Nooning,"  345 ;  his  genius  and  bril- 
liant record,  346-348 ;  and  see  12, 49, 
51,  92,  97,98, 106,  no,  115, 129,  133, 
190,  191, 209,  216,  277,  279,  300,  351, 
360,  364,  380,  427,  439. 

Lowell,  Maria  White  (1821-53),  50, 
309,  311. 

Lowell,  Robert  Traill  Spence,  51. 

Lucretius,  198,  370. 

Lunt,  George,  41. 

Lyrical  Poetry,  its  makers  not  affected 
by  certain   restrictions,  18;   fresh- 


32 


498 


INDEX. 


ness  and  variety  in  America,  18 ; 
Halleck's,  40;  Boker's,  57;  Stod- 
dard's songs,  etc.,  58  ;  Bryant's,  80, 
83  ;  Emerson's  genius  for,  1 50 ;  lyr- 
ical quality  highest  in  Emerson, 
164,  165;  Longfellow's  lyrical  qual- 
ity, 191,  192;  Poe's  unique  lyrical 
quality,  241-248;  beauty  of  Low- 
ell's, 315,  316,  339;  Whitman's 
genius  for,  353  ;  Winter's,  440 ;  Al- 
drich's,  ib. 
Lytle,  William  Haines  (1826-63),  453. 

Macaulay,  112. 

Macdonough,  Augustus  Rodney,  55. 

MacDowell,  Katherine  Sherwood 
Bonner  (1849-83),  455. 

Mackay,  Charles,  in. 

Macon,  John  Alfred  (1851-     ),  455. 

Macrae,  David,  Longfellow's  remarks 
to,  199. 

Magazines,  etc.,  "Southern  Literary 
Messenger,"  235;  "American  Re- 
view," etc.,  236 ;  "  Graham's,"  400 ; 
"Pioneer,"  310;  "Putnam's 
Monthly,"  354,  355,  408 ;  "  Atlantic 
Monthly,"  91,  293,  326, 409 ;  "  North 
American  Review,"  60,  72,  90,  326. 

Manliness,  need  of,  in  recent  verse, 
472. 

Manner,  vs.  Style,  Lowell's,  342,  343 ; 
his  strength  of,  314. 

Mannerism,  its  good  side,  71;  Long- 
fellow's, 214;  Poe's,  257;  Whit- 
man's, 378  ;  no  mark  of  genius,  378. 

Margaret  Smith's  Journal,  Whittier's, 
no. 

Marginalia,  Poe's,  255. 

"  Maria  del  Occidente."  See  Brooks, 
Maria  G. 

"Marian  Douglas."  See  Robinson, 
Annie  D. 

Market,  the  Literary,  need  of,  22,  23; 
growth,   29;    in   Philadelphia    and 


New  York,  42,  44 ;  fickle  and  shift- 
ing character  of,  in  Poe's  time,  234, 
237  ;  dangers  of  too  ready  sale,  293  ; 
hack-work  often  harmful  to  genius, 
294 ;  Whitman's  relations  to,  361 ; 
Howells's  perception  of,  462 ;  and 
see  38. 
Martin,  Homer,  46. 
Martin,  John,  242. 
Marvell,  A.,  167 ;  his  Ode,  427. 
Masqfce  of  the  Gods,  The,  Taylor's,  430. 
"  Masque  of  the  Red  Death,"  Poe's, 

238. 
Massachusetts  vs.  New  York,  355. 
Massey,  Gerald,  in. 
Masterpieces,  their  need  of  adequate 
theme  and  atmosphere,  19,  20 ;  Poe's 
best  tales,  254;  Lowell's  "  Biglow 
Papers,"  321 ;  and  see  294. 
Materialism  —  material      energy      of 
America,  17;  benefits  of,  471  ;  and 
see  54,  437. 
Mather,  Cotton,  34. 
Mather,  Increase,  34. 
Mathews,  Cornelius,  57. 
Matthews,  Brander,  on  play-writing, 

468. 
Maturin,  C.  R.,  252. 
May,  Samuel  J.,  104. 
"May-Day,"  Emerson's,  152. 
McDermott,  Hugh  Farrar  (1834-    ), 

444. 
McEntee,  Jervis,  46. 
McFingal,  Trumbull's,  35. 
McKay,  Jas.  Thomson  (1843-    ^443. 
McKnight,  George,  443. 
McLean,  Sarah  Pratt  (1855-    )>  455- 
McMaster,  Guy  Humphrey  (1829-    ), 

49. 
Mediaevalism,    revival    of    mediaeval 
forms,  195;  Longfellow's,  205,  206; 
and  see  204. 
Medicine,   profession   of,  and  litera- 
ture, 279. 


INDEX. 


499 


Meditative  Poetry,  Bryant's,  47,  66, 80. 

Melody,  Emerson's,  178;  Poe  a  mas- 
ter of,  243-252,  passim;  essential 
to  poetry,  249 ;  of  negro  song,  251. 

Melville,  Herman,  49. 

Memnon,  Carleton's,  469. 

"  Memoranda  during  the  War,"  Whit- 
man's, 364. 

"Merlin,"  Emerson's,  165. 

Metaphysics,  hostile  to  inspiration 
and  art,  249 ;  Poe's  dislike  of,  253. 

Metre,  Holmes's  liking  for  classical 
English  forms,  288  ;  measure  of 
"Locksley  Hall,"  313;  Whitman's 
lyrical  and  metrical  method,  exam- 
ined, 371-378,  —  not  original,  37.1, — 
not  to  be  rejected  for  its  strangeness, 
372,  —  its  rejection  of  common 
forms,  373,  —  conformed  to  a  theory, 
37  c;, —  Whitman's  explanation  of, 
375,  — how  suited  to  his  talent  and 
purpose,  376,  —  extreme  formalism 
of,  377  ;  true  genius  at  eas*with  any 
and  all  forms,  377 ;  Whitman's 
measures  most  effective,  when  least 
eccentric,  378;  Taylor's  retention 
of  original  metres  in  translation,  423, 
424 ;  Pindaric  verse,  427 ;  the  ele- 
giac distich,  454 ;  and  see  Form. 

Michael  Angelo,  Longfellow's,  207. 

Microcosm,  The,  Coles's,  300. 

Middle  classes,  relations  of  Longfel- 
low and  Tennyson  to,  220. 
Middle  States,  Poets  and  Poetry  of, 

37- 

"  Miles  O'Reilly,"  see  Halpine. 

Miller,  Cincinnatus  Hiner  (Joaquin), 
pictures  of  nature, 47  ;  poetry  of,  452. 

Millet,  J.  F.,  115. 

Milton,  his  poetic  canon,  165,  224; 
and  see  70,  100,  167,  327. 

Minor  Verse,  significant  of  the  gen- 
eral drift,  436 ;  profusion  of,  460. 

"Mirror,  The,"  236. 


Miscellanies,  Emerson's,  171. 
"  Miscellany,  The  Boston,"  309. 
Mitchell,  Donald  G.,  401. 
Mitchell,  S.  Weir  (1830-    ),  443. 
Mitchell,  Walter  (1826-    ),  443. 
Mitchill,  Samuel  Latham  (1 764-1 831) 

a  prototype  of  Holmes,  279,  286. 
"Modern    Instance,    A,"   Howells's, 

295- 

Modern  Job,  The,  Peterson's,  443. 

Modern  Poets,  Emerson  on,  179. 

Mogg  Megone,  Whittier's,  III. 

Moliere,  259,  338,  468. 

Moller,  cited  by  Emerson,  149. 

Monkhouse,  Cosmo,  on  Whitman,  363. 

Montaigne,  compared  with  Emerson, 
297  ;  and  see  143,  145,  171,  332. 

Monte  Rosa,  Nichols's,  443. 

Montgomery,  George  Edgar,  scien- 
tific spirit,  444 ;  rhythm,  id. 

Montgomery,  James,  39. 

Moore,  40,  239,  286,  287,  290,  399,  407. 

Moralism,  Longfellow's  habit  of  mor- 
alizing, 190,  215;  the  New  England 
failing  in  art,  312 ;  and  see  408. 

Morality,  of  American  poets,  123; 
necessity  of  some  standard,  270. 

"  Morituri  Salutamus,"  Longfellow's, 
215. 

Morris,  George  Pope,  41. 

Morris,  William,  compared  with 
Longfellow,  208  ;  and  see  89,  407. 

"  Morte  d'Arthur,"  Tennyson's,  86. 

Moulton,  Louise  Chandler  (1835-  ), 
446. 

"  MS.  Found  in  a  Bottle,"  Poe's,  233. 

Muhlenberg,  William  Augustus  (1796- 

1877),  SO- 
Munby,  Arthur  J.,  his    "Dorothy," 

198,  454- 
Munford,  William  (1775-1825),  55. 
Murfree,  Mary  Noailles,  451,  463. 
Music,  and  Poetry,  merits  and  defects 

of  Lanier's  theory,  449,  450. 


5oo 


INDEX. 


"  My  Captain,"  Whitman's,  378,  392. 
"  My  Lost  Youth,"  Longfellow's,  194. 
Mysticism,  Poe's  passion  for,  253,  255, 

258. 
My  Study  Windows,  Lowell's,  327. 

Narrative  Poetry,  Longfellow's 
success  in,  194 ;  his  talent  as  a  ra- 
conteur, his  Tales,  etc.,  208,  —  com- 
pared with  Morris's,  208,  209 ;  Tay- 
lor's, 407. 

Narrowness,  the  main  defect  of  Whit- 
man, 384,  386. 

Nationality,  American,  96,  97,  —  Her- 
bert Spencer  on,  219;  Longfellow's 
conception  of  a  national  literature, 
218,  219 ;  formation  of  the  national 
type,  474 ;  and  see  456. 

National  Ode,  The,  Taylor's  Centen- 
nial Poem,  427 ;  its  measure,  etc., 
427. 

National  Sentiment,  28,  29;  patriot- 
ism, 28,  29,  123,  —  expressed  in 
song,  36,  —  Holmes's,  299 ;  in  poe- 
try and  literature,  48,  49  ;  and  emo- 
tion, songs  of,  49  j  nonrecognition 
of,  60. 

National  Song,  its  relations  to  a  na- 
tion's spirit  and  history,  1 ;  a 
growth,  not  an  artifice,  3 ;  original 
flavor  required,  12 ;  must  reflect  the 
national  life,  44  ;  exemplified  by  our 
poets,  48,  49 ;  and  see  36. 

Naturalism.    See  Realism. 

Naturalness,  of  American  Female 
Poets,  447. 

Nature,  Emerson's,  171. 

Nature,  poets  of,  are  poets  of  free- 
dom, 91  ;  Whittier's  youth  with, 
103;  Emerson  on  Nature  and  the 
Universal  Soul,  148,  149;  Whit- 
man's view  of,  368 ;  her  law  of  Re- 
serve, 368,  369;  Taylor's  love  of, 
399. 


"Nature,"  sonnet  by  Longfellow,  213. 
"  Nature  and  the  Poets,"  Burroughs's, 

117. 
Neal,  John,  41. 
Negro  minstrelsy,  songs,  ballads,  etc., 

25I. 

Neo-Platonism,  143. 

Neo-Romanticism,  220,459;  English, 
10. 

Neurotic  disorder,  effect  on  genius, 
270. 

New  Day,  The,  Gilder's,  442. 

New  England,  early  regard  for  letters, 
34;  a  mother  to  her  poets,  53; 
Whittier  the  poet  of,  97-99,  106; 
popular  traits,  98;  influence  upon 
the  country  at  large,  98,  99 ;  traits 
of,  147  ;  dislike  of  the  unsavory  and 
unclean,  166;  village-life  in  "Kav- 
anagh,"  187;  every -day  life  por- 
trayed by  Holmes  and  Howells, 
295 ;  our  Eastern  poets,  299 ; 
Holmejs  a  type  of  its  cleverness, 
302;  Lowell's  rendering  of,  305, 
346, —  his  Yankee  characters  and 
dialect,  321-325;  effect  of  its  train- 
ing, 306;  and  see  130,  177. 

New  England  School,  397;  habit  of 
preaching,  215. 

"New  England  Tragedies,  The," 
Longfellow's,  204. 

Newton,  155. 

New  York,  poets  and  poetry  of,  39- 
42 ;  indifference,  53 ;  as  the  literary 
market,  237  ;  authorship  in,  397 ; 
as  a  literary  centre,  416. 

Nichols,  Starr  Hoyt,  443. 

Nimrod,  de  Kay's,  442. 

Nomenclature,  use  of  Roman  substi- 
tutes for  Grecian  names,  91. 

"  Nooning,  The,"  Lowell's  projected 
idyl,  345. 

"  North  American  Review,  T  h  e," 
Whitman's  paper  in,  60;  edited  by 


INDEX. 


50I 


Lowell  and  Norton,  326;  and  see 
72,90. 

North  and  South,  their  spirits  con- 
trasted, 255. 

North  Shore  Watch,  The,  Wood- 
berry's,  461. 

Norton,  Andrews,  52. 

Norton,  Charles  Eliot,  55,  210. 

Norton,  John,  Elegy  on  Anne  Brad- 
street,  33 ;  and  see  277. 

Novels  and  Novelists,  Simms,  38; 
pioneers  in  America,  40;  novels, 
Poe's  incapacity  for  writing  them, 
252,  —  review  of  Holmes's,  294, 
295,  —  Taylor's,  420,  421,  —  of  our 
female  writers,  448;  Holmes  and 
Howells,  295;  novelist-poets,  461- 
463 ;  diversion  of  ideality  to  prose 
fiction,  461  -  463 ;  Aldrich,  462 ; 
Howells  and  his  career,  462;  re- 
cent American  experts,  463 ;  lesson 
to  the  poets,  464 ;  present  surplus- 
age, 465. 

Novelty,  the  revival  of  old  modes,  276. 

Oakes,  Urian,  Elegy  on   Shepard, 

33 ;  and  see  34,  277. 
Objective  Poetry,  146. 
Obscurity  of  Style,  condemned  by  Poe, 

168 ;  not  conducive  to  lasting  fame, 

221. 
O'Brien,   Fitz  -  James   (1828-62),   59, 

404,  444. 
"  Occasional  "  Poetry,  Whittier's,  108, 

122,  123;    Longfellow's,  192,   193; 

merits  and  faults  of  Holmes's,  287- 

291. 
O'Connor,   William  Douglas,   "The 

Good  Gray  Poet,"  360. 
O'Conor,  Charles,  74. 
Ode  measures,  no. 
Ode  on  the  Death  of  Nat.  Bacon,  33. 
Ode  to  W.  H.  Channing,  Emerson's, 

169. 


Odes,  Lowell's,  343-346,  428;  Tay- 
lor's, 427. 

O'Hara,  Theodore  (1820-67),  49. 

"  Old  Ironsides,"  Holmes's,  280. 

Omar,  279 ;  Rubaiyat  of,  184. 

"One-hoss  Shay,  The,"  Holmes's, 
285,  292. 

Oppression,  conflict  with,  49. 

Optimism,  Emerson's,  141. 

Oratory,  in  the  South,  449. 

O'Reilly,  John  Boyle,  444. 

Orientalism,  Emerson's,  167. 

Originality,  how  manifest  in  national 
song,  5 ;  character  of  Bryant's,  67 ; 
isolating  effect  of,  180 ;  the  question 
of  Longfellow's,  217,  218 ;  a  distinc- 
tive air  and  tone,  218;  Poe's,  239; 
Emerson's,  297 ;  Holmes's,  297 ; 
Lowell's,  347;  false,  366;  misun- 
derstood at  first,  372. 

Osgood,   Frances  Sargent  (1811-50), 

5°- 

Osgood,  Kate  Putnam  (1841-    ),  446. 

Ossoli,  the  Marchioness.  See  Fuller, 
Sarah  Margaret. 

Otis,  Calvin  N.,  quoted,  19. 

Outlook,  the,  survey  of  the  poetic 
field,  with  surmises  as  to  the  future, 
435-476;  alleged  decadence,  436; 
recent  conditions,  437,  438;  poets 
of  the  middle  and  younger  schools, 
439-441;  female  poets,  444-448; 
the  South,  449-451 ;  the  Pacific 
slope,  451,  452 ;  the  Inland  States, 
452-454 ;  translations,  dialect-verse, 
etc.,  454,  455 ;  traits  of  the  general 
choir,  as  compared  with  those  of 
minor  British  poets,  456;  relative 
importance  of  our  elder  and  younger 
schools,  456-458 ;  over-refinement, 
459;  passing  vogues,  460;  profuse 
minor  verse,  460 ;  half-efforts,  461 ; 
an  intercalary  period,  461 ;  diver- 
sion of  ideality  to  prose  fiction,  etc., 


502 


INDEX. 


461-464 ;  a  Life-School  needed,  464 ; 
attitude  and  demands  of  the  public, 
465 ;  promise  of  a  dramatic  move- 
ment, 466 ;  the  stage,  467  ;  poet  and 
playwright,  468 ;  present  favoring 
conditions,  470-472;  present  re- 
quirements, 472;  our  novitiate 
ended,  473 ;  points  of  vantage,  474, 
475;  conjecture  of  the  future,  476. 

"  Out  of  the  Cradle  Endlessly  Rock- 
ing," Whitman's,  353. 

Outre-Mer,  Longfellow's  early  legend, 
51,  181 ;  reviewed,  185. 

Over-refinement,  Whitman's  verse  a 
reaction  from,  385. 

Over-work,  Taylor's,  418  ;  question  of 
American,  418. 

"  Owen  Innsley."  See  Jennison,  L.  W. 

Pacific  Coast,  poets  of,  451,  452. 
Page,  William,  his  portrait  of  Lowell, 

312. 
Page,  Thomas  Nelson,  451. 
Paine,  Robert  Treat,  Jr.  (1773-1811), 

35- 

Painting,  American,  contrasted  with 
poetry,  4 ;  its  new-world  beginning, 
14;  first  distinctive  school  that  of 
landscape,  46,  —  analogy  between 
their  work  and  Bryant's,  47 ;  land- 
scape, 68,  466. 

Palmer,  John  Williamson  (1825-  ), 
49. 

Palmer,  Ray  (1808-    ),  50. 

Pandora,  Longfellow's,  204. 

Pantheism,  modern,  262. 

Parker,  Theodore,  130. 

Parkman,  Francis,  on  Whittier,  97. 

Parnassus,  Emerson's,  166,  175,  248. 

Parsons,  Thomas  William,  an  exqui- 
site lyrical  poet,55;  his  translations 
of  Dante,  55,  210;  "  Lines  on  a  Bust 
of  Dante,"  55 ;  a  poet  for  poets,  ib.; 
and  see  51,  54,  360. 


Passion,  wanting  in  Bryant,  70; 
Whittier 's,  121 ;  rare  in  Emerson, 
156,  157;  its  extremes  avoided  by 
Longfellow,  221-223. 

"  Past,  The,"  Bryant's,  82. 

Pastoral  Verse,  Whittier  on,  116. 

Pater,  Walter,  401. 

Paulding,  James  Kirke,  40. 

"  Paul  Hermes."     See  Thayer,  W.  P. 

Payne,  John  Howard,  40,  466. 

Peabody,  William  Bourne  Oliver 
(1 799-1847),  50. 

Peck,  Samuel  Minturn  (1854-     ),  448. 

Pedantry,  colonial,  15,  35. 

Pembroke,  Earl  of,  155. 

Pendragon,  Young's,  454. 

Pennsylvanian  Idyls,  Taylor's,  412. 

Pentameter  Verse,  rhymed,  Bryant's, 
72 ;  and  see  English  Heroic  Verse. 

Percival,  James  Gates,  38,  47,  188. 

Period,  our  own,  its  intercalary  na- 
ture, 461 ;  summary  of  present  fa- 
voring conditions,  470-472 ;  present 
requirements,  472-474. 

Perry,  Nora  (18-     ),  446. 

Personality,  marked,  of  Am.  Poets, 
128;  Emerson's,  140,  141;  Poe's, 
as  revealed  by  tradition  and  por- 
traiture, 227-229;  effective  charm 
of  Holmes's,  300,  301 ;  Lowell's, 
306;  essential  to  produce  good 
work,  306;  Whitman's  picturesque 
bearing,  352,  357,  359,  390,  391; 
Taylor's,  410. 

Peterson,  Frederick  (1859-    ),  454. 

Peterson,  Henry,  443. 

Petofi,  105. 

Phelps,  Charles  Henry,  452. 

Phelps,   Elizabeth    Stuart   (1844-    ), 

446. 
Phi  Beta  Kappa  Society,  283. 
Philanthropy,  Whittier's,  129,  130. 
Philistinism,    metropolitan,    53,    54 
Bryant's  relations  to,  65. 


INDEX. 


503 


Philosophy,  the  ideal,  133;  method  of, 
opposed  to  that  of  poetry,  133; 
Emerson's,  140,  143,  144;  union 
with  poetry,  141 ;  Emerson's,  exam- 
ined, 141-147  ;  of  the  ancients,  142- 
144;  Plato,  143;  Plotinus,  144; 
transfigured  in  Emerson's  poetry, 
148-150. 
Piatt,  John  James,  his  landscape,  47  ; 
prairie  and  homestead  idyls  of,  453 ; 
and  see  440,  462. 
Piatt,  Sarah  Morgan  Bryan  (1836-    ), 

446. 
Picture  of  St.  John,  The,  Taylor's,  425. 
Picturesqueness,  Longfellow's,  190. 
Pierpont,  John,  37,  280. 
Pike,  Albert,  38,  41. 
Pindar,  353,  423- 
Pindaric  Verse,  427. 
Pinkney,  Edward  Coate,  37. 
"  Pioneer,  The,"  edited  by  Lowell  and 

Carter,  310. 
Placidity,  not  a  characteristic  of  the 

greatest  art,  221. 
Plagiarism,  question  of  Longfellow's, 

189. 
Plantation  or  Negro  verse,  455. 
Plato,  Emerson  on,  137,  142,  155. 
Plays  and  Playwrights.    See  Drama 

and  Dramatists. 
Plotinus,  likeness  of  Emerson  to,  144. 
Plutarch,  143. 

Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  on  the  sentimen- 
talists, 43;  on  transcendental  poe- 
try, 168,  169;  criticism  of  Longfel- 
low, 189,  —  of  his  "  Evangeline," 
196;  review  of  his  life  and  works, 
225-272;  distinctive  reputation, 
225 ;  ideals  of  him  formed  by  Time, 
225 ;  opposite  views  of  his  charac- 
ter, 226 ;  a  unique  writer,  227 ;  per- 
sonal aspect,  227  ;  Halpin's  engrav- 
ing of,  228;  later  portraits,  228; 
Briggs's  pen-portrait  of,  229 ;  a  com- 


plex nature,  229;  story  of  his  life 
and    career,   230  -  237  ;    parentage, 
birth,  and  education,  230,  231 ;  ser- 
vice in  the  U.  S.  Army,   231 ;  at 
West  Point,  232 ;  rupture  with  his 
protector,   Mr.   Allan,   232 ;    prize- 
story  of  "A  MS.  Found  in  a  Bot- 
tle,"  233;    perverse    temperament, 
234;  precarious   literary   life,  234- 
236;    marriage,     235;     on     "The 
Southern  Literary  Messenger,"  235 ; 
work,  errors,  and  misfortunes,  235, 
236;    death,   236;    dependence    on 
the  literary  market,  237  ;  exclusively 
a  man  of  letters,  238  ;   Tales  of  the 
Grotesque  and  Arabesque,  238;  re- 
view of  his  poetry,  239-248 ;  early 
books  of  verse,  239 ;  precocity,  240 ; 
The  Raven  and  Other  Poems,  241- 
248 ;  "  The  Raven,"  241,  242 ;  "  City 
in  the  Sea,"  "The  Sleeper,"  "The 
Bells,"  etc.,  242-246;   "Ulalume," 
246 ;  "  The  Haunted   Palace  "  and 
"Israfel,"  247,  248;  limited  range, 
248,  250;  his  theory  of  Poetry,  249, 
250;  use   of  refrain  and  repetend, 
250;  sound   and   rhythm,    251;  his 
Tales,  252-254;  revolt  against  the 
commonplace,  252 ;   qualities  as  a 
romancer,   253;   his   prose  master- 
pieces, 254;  compared  with   Haw- 
thorne, 254;  Marginalia,  255;   The 
Literati,  256 ;  prose  style  and  equip- 
ment, 257-264 ;  "  Fall  of  the  House 
of   Usher,"  258;  fantasy  and  gro- 
tesqueness,  258,  259;  lack  of  true 
humor,  id. ;  affectation  of  learning, 
260 ;   his  materials,   261 ;    Eureka, 
262 ;  absolute  love  of  beauty,  263 ; 
protest    against    didacticism,   263; 
Griswold's  memoir  of,  265;  moral 
and  physical  traits,  266-272 ;  chas- 
tity of  his  writings,  266 ;  not  a  scof- 
fer nor  an  habitual  drunkard,  but 


504 


INDEX. 


with  an  inherited  taint,  267 ;  sensi- 
tiveness, 268;  unmorality,  269; 
question  of  neurotic  disorder,  270; 
fatal  lack  of  will,  271 ;  on  Lowell, 
311- ;  his  analysis  of  "The  Raven," 
324;  on  Taylor,  402;  and  see  12, 
38,  41,  54,  56,  65,  129,  164,  325,  332, 
35°,  374,  4ii,  416,  433,  449,  451- 

Poems  of  Barnaval,  de  Kay's,  442. 

Poems  of  Places,  Longfellow's,  188. 

Poems  of  the  Orient,  Taylor's,  re- 
viewed, 406-408,  457. 

Poet,  special  distinction  awarded  him, 
63 ;  the  supreme  and  typical,  177, 
178;  Emerson's  conception  of,  179; 
tests  of  his  genius,  470. 

Poetae  Emeriti,  439. 

Poet  and  his  Master,  The,  Gilder's,  442. 

Poet  at  the  Breakfast-  Table,  The, 
Holmes's,  294. 

Poet  Militant,  Whittier,  124. 

Poetic  Life,  Poe  as  an  exemplar,  264- 
272  ;  question  of  success,  396 ;  Tay- 
lor's Arcadian  Days,  403,  —  ro- 
mance of  his  youth,  405 ;  lesson  of 
Taylor's,  413-419;  his  varied  expe- 
riences, 414 ;  his  own  theory  of, 
415;  question  of  choice  and  envi- 
ronment, 415,  416;  in  New  York, 
416 ;  influence  of  journalism  on, 
417  ;  distracting  forces,  418,  419. 

*  Poetic  Principle,  The,"  Poe's  essay 
on,  249. 

Poetry :  A  Metrical  Essay,  Holmes's, 
283. 

Poetry,  chief  of  the  arts,  1 ;  study  of 
its  aim  and  province,  2 ;  American 
school  of,  4-1 1  etseq.  ;  Scottish,  21, 
22  ;  relations  to  criticism,  25 ;  delay 
of  its  rise  in  America,  26,  —  rea- 
son, 27  ;  final  beginning  of,  28-30 ; 
relative  order,  epic,  dramatic,  reflec- 
tive, descriptive,  etc.,  46;  impor- 
tance of  tone  in,  68,  69 ;  simplicity 


of  the  best,  78,  170;  judged  per  se, 
105 ;  duty  of  the  poet  as  an  artist, 
107;  faith  essential  to,  128;  poetry 
of  humanity  vs.  that  of  the  ideal, 
129;  method  of,  compared  with  that 
of  philosophy,  133,  134;  technique, 
135;  poetry  of  thought,  135,  136; 
the  language  of  intellectual  nobil- 
ity, 136,  148;  subjective  and  objec- 
tive, 146;  its  credentials,  148;  her- 
esy of  the  didactic,  150;  its  pro- 
phetic vision  of  scientific  laws,  1 53- 
155;  not  mere  artisanship,  158; 
crystalline  expression,  161  -  163  ; 
rhythmical  compression,  163;  Mil- 
ton's canon  of,  165,  224;  Emerson's 
view  in  "  Merlin,"  165 ;  law  of  good 
taste,  166;  transcendental  method 
in,  168,  169;  "that  which  shapes 
and  elevates,"  177  ;  as  a  liberal  art, 
177 ;  impetus  to,  from  Longfellow, 
—  poetry  of  taste  and  the  affections, 
190;  excessive  literary  flavor,  215; 
poetry  of  "  passion  and  of  pain,"  221 ; 
sympathetic,  222 ;  haunting  quality, 
227  ;  a  passion,  not  a  purpose  with 
Poe,  239,  —  his  theory  of,  in  "  The 
Poetic  Principle,"  249 ;  relations  of, 
to  neurotic  disorder,  270 ;  effect  of 
Fashion  on,  273,  274;  revivals  and 
survivals  of  old  styles,  275,  276; 
collegiate  verse,  277 ;  the  fruit  of 
passion  and  experience,  279,  307  ; 
knee-buckle  and  society-verse,  281 ; 
"occasional,"  281-291,  passim; 
songs,  282 ;  for  the  wise  and  witless, 
289 ;  Holmes  as  a  reciter  of,  301 ; 
antique  and  modern  purposes  con- 
trasted, 311,312;  progressive  poe- 
try, 313  ;  Lowell,  on  construction 
of,  315,  —  his  theory  of,  316,  —  his 
poetry  of  Nature,  317-319 ;  serio- 
comic verse,  321,  322  ;  eclogues, 
321;  Lowell's  satirical,  321-326, — 


INDEX. 


505 


his  technical  distinction  of,  from 
prose,  327,  328,  — his  odes,  343- 
345;  must  imitate  the  decency  of 
Nature,  367-370;  Goethe  on  its  dis- 
tinction from  prose,  373 ;  of  the  fu- 
ture, 375;  of  nature,  379,  380;  the 
genre,  380;  imagination,  its  chief 
requisite,  381 ;  relations  to  science, 
382;  formalism,  386;  Lanier's 
theory  of  verse,  450;  dangers  of 
theorizing,  450;  its  enduring  qual- 
ity, 463;  must  possess  human  and 
dramatic  interest,  464-466;  prose- 
romance  not  a  lasting  substitute, 
465;  not  alone  a  criticism  of  life, 
466 ;  the  poet's  faculty  compulsive, 
470;  conditions  now  favoring,  471- 
473;  effect  of  criticism,  471;  not 
only  an  art,  but  an  inspiration,  472 ; 
our  English  tongue  as  its  medium, 
475;  its  canons  unalterable,  476; 
the  future  of  American  song,  476 ; 
and  see  Bucolic  Verse,  Descriptive 
Poetry,  Drama,  Idyllic  Verse,  Love- 
Poetry,  Narrative  Poetry,  Pastoral 
Verse,  Reform  -  Verse,  Religious 
Verse,  Satire,  Sentimental  Verse, 
Sonnets,  etc. 
Poets,  American,  their  aids  and  hin- 
drances, 4,  11;  early  restrictions, 
—  novelty  of  the  situation,  13,  —  col- 
onialism, 14,  —  conflict  with  Nature, 
15,  —  pedantry  of  colonial  verse- 
makers,  15,  —  immature  Republican- 
ism, 16,  17, —  materialism,  17,— 
technical  difficulties,  18,  —  lack  of 
home-themes,  19,  20,  —  disenchant- 
ments,  21, — want  of  background,  21, 
22,  —  inadequate  support,  23,  —  de- 
fective copyright,  23-25;  landscape 
of,  28  ;  national  feeling,  29 ;  love  of 
freedom  of,  29;  means  of  support, 
29;  conviction,  29;  reverence,  29; 
leading  names  from  the  settlement 


to  the  Civil  War,  31-61 ;  colonial, 
33-35 ;  Revolutionary,  35 ;  post-Rev- 
olutionary, 36 ;  earliest  group  of  real 
promise,  37  ;  sectional  traits,  37  ; 
eastern,  37-39 ;  southern,  38 ;  in  New 
York,  etc.,  39-43.  53>-  54  J  conces- 
sions to  the  pioneers,  39 ;  multiplica- 
tion of  versifiers  in  Poe's  time,  42  ; 
sentimentality,  male  and  female,  43 ; 
survival  of  the  fittest,  44;  descrip- 
tive, 46, 47  ;  true  to  the  national  sen- 
timent, 48,  49 ;  religious,  50 ;  female, 
50;  university,  51;  transcendental, 
51,  52,  146,  147 ;  composite  and  ar- 
tistic, 52-58 ;  as  playwrights,  57  ;  as 
satirists,  etc.,  59 ;  poets  of  freedom 
and  patriotism,  91 ;  question  of  "the 
best "  among  them,  95,  — the  "  most 
national,"  96;  purity  of,  123,  124; 
distinct  as  personages,  129;  Whit- 
man's strictures  on,  389 ;  recent  and 
younger,  in  the  East,  West,  and 
South,  enumeration,  440-455;  a 
Scotchman  on  "American  poet- 
esses," 444,  —  their  muster-roll  and 
traits,  444-448  ;  compared  with  Brit- 
ish contemporaries,  456 ;  recent  and 
younger,  halting  purpose  and  ideal- 
ity of,  458 ;  decorative  feeling,  459 ; 
their  present  opportunity  and  re- 
quirements, 471-475;  and  see  In- 
troduction. 

"  Poets  and  Poetry  of  America,"  and 
Griswold's  other  works,  265. 

"  Poets  and  Poetry  of  Europe,"  Long- 
fellow's, 188. 

Poets  Journal,  The,  Taylor's,  405, 
419. 

Pope,  65,  67,  72,  76,  89,  275,  288,  303, 

3°8»  336. 
Popularity,     Longfellow's,     222;     of 

Whitman  and  of  Whittier  compared, 

385  ;  and  see  Fame. 
Porter,  Noah,  176. 


506 


INDEX. 


Poverty,  bearing  on  authorship,  267, 

268. 
Powers,   Horatio    Nelson    (1826-    ), 

443- 

Practice- Work,  Poe's,  241. 
"  Prairies,  The,"  Bryant's,  81. 
Precocity,   Bryant's,   72 ;  Poe's,  240 ; 

of  Bryant,  Keats  and  Shelley,  402. 
Preston,     Harriet    Waters,     (18-     ), 

translations    from    the    Provencal, 

etc.,  55,  454. 
Preston,   Margaret  Junkin    (183-    ), 

447- 
Prince  Deukalion,  Taylor's  swan-song, 

431  ;  rhythmical  beauty,  ib.;  theme 

and  sentiment  of,  431,  432. 
"  Princess,  The,"  Tennyson's,  89. 
Pro  arts  etfocis,  48,  130. 
"Problem,  The,"  Emerson's,  152. 
Proctor,  Edna  Dean,  (18-    ),  446. 
Professor    at    the    Breakfast-  Table, 

Holmes's,  294. 
Propagandism,  of  Whitman  and  his 

disciples,  360,  386. 
Prophet,     The,    Taylor's,     428  -  430 ; 

modes   of  treating  such  a  theme, 

429. 

Prophet  Bard,  the,  131. 

Proportion,  the  sense  of,  deficient  in 
Emerson,  159;  sense  of,  in  Poe, 
257  ;  and  see  336. 

Prose,  Bryant's,  93;  Whittier's,  no; 
Emerson's,  134,  136,  171 -176, — 
its  strength  and  importance,  171  ; 
Bacon's,  171 ;  Carlyle's,  171 ;  Lan- 
dor's,  172 ;  purity  of  Emerson's 
style,  173,  —  poetic  quality  of  same, 
T73>  J74;  "prose  poems,"  174; 
Longfellow's,  185;  Poe's  compared 
with  Hawthorne's,  257 ;  Holmes's 
works  in,  291  ;  of  poets,  compared 
with  their  verse,  327,  328,  363  ; 
Lowell's,  326-338,  —  individuality 
°*>  327>328,  —  the  strictures  upon, 


328,  —  style,  330,  —  conceits  of,  330, 
—  point  and  wisdom,  332-334, — 
lack  of  proportion,  336,  —  wealth 
and  freedom,  337  ;  defects  of  Whit- 
man's, 363 ;  Whitman  on,  as  substi- 
tute for  verse,  373 ;  Goethe  on  "  po- 
etic prose,"  373 ;  Taylor's,  401,  421  ; 
and  see  31. 

Proudfit,  David  Law  (1842-     ),  443. 

Provincialism,  the  charm  of  Boston, 
284 ;  of  Concord  and  of  "  Manna- 
hatta  "  compared,  356. 

Pseudo-classicism,  456. 

Pseudo-naturalism,  of  Whitman's  sex- 
ual poems,  370. 

Public,  changes  in  its  taste,  438 ;  our 
poets  and  the,  465 ;  and  the  play- 
wright, 468. 

Public  Men,  American  jurists,  states- 
men, etc.,  305 ;  in  the  Biglow  Pa- 
pers, 323. 

Puritanism,  and  the  Quakers,  99, 101 ; 
Whittier  on,  125;  cleanliness  next 
to  godliness,  166;  opposed  to  beauty 
and  sentiment,  181 ;  Longfellow's 
treatment  of,  205 ;  Poe's  misunder- 
standing of,  253;  Holmes's  conflict 
with,  277,  295 ;  and  see  446. 

Purity,  Whittier's,  129. 

"Putnam's  Monthly,"  on  Whitman, 
354,  355- 

Quakerism,  Whittier's,  101,  —  his 
Quaker  ballads,  113;  and  see  99, 
125,  126,  385,  398,  430. 

"Quaker  Poet,  The,"  113.  See  Whit- 
tier. 

"  Quaker  Widow,  The,"  Taylor's,  412. 

Quality,  vs.  copiousness,  114 ;  marked 
in  Lowell's  verse,  316,  317. 

Quantity,  antique  and  modern,  197, 
198. 

Queen  Anne's  Period,  its  style  in 
vogue,  275  ;  verse  of,  289. 


INDEX. 


507 


Rabelais,  370. 

Radicalism,  313. 

"  Rain-Dream,  A,"  82. 

Randall,  James  Ryder,  49,  451. 

Randolph,     Anson     Davis     Fitz 

(1820-     ),  50. 
"  Randolph  of  Roanoke,"  Whittier's, 

109,  122. 
Range,  narrowness  of  Poe's,  239,  248, 

251  ;  Lowell's,  340. 
"  Rape  of  the  Lock,  The,"  289. 
Raphael,  258. 
Ratiocination,  Poe's   experiments  in, 

253- 
"Raven,  The,"  Poe's,  criticised,  241, 

242 ;    Poe's  analysis  of,  246,   250 ; 

and  see  237,  245,  324. 

Raven  and  Other  Poems,  The,  Poe's, 
241-248,  457. 

Read,  Thomas  Buchanan,  54,  56 ;  his 
portrait  of  Taylor,  402. 

Reading,  Lowell's  wide,  331. 

Realism,  Poe's,  253  ;  of  Holmes's  and 
Howells's  novels,  295;  Whitman's 
poems  of  sex,  358,  —  theory  of  Na- 
ture and  art,  367,  —  his  poems  on 
the  body  and  its  functions,  366-370, 
—  as  an  advertisement,  366,  —  too 
anatomical,  366,  —  his  defence  and 
theory  of,  367,  368,  —  to  be  tested 
by  his  own  rules,  367,  —  his  mis- 
conception of  Nature's  method,  368, 
369,  —  and  see  383;  ancient  views 
on,  369 ;  in  poetic  drama,  must  not 
be  applied  to  a  commonplace  theme, 
429;  not  the  supreme  end  of  art, 
430 ;  of  modern  drama,  467  ;  and 
see  322. 

Recitation,  poems  for,  280,  283; 
Holmes's  gift  for,  301. 

Reform-Verse,  want  of  artistic  con- 
scientiousness in,  109;  Whittier's, 
129;  Longfellow's  superficial,  191; 
Lowell's,  310,  312,  313. 


Refrain,  use  of,  by  Poe  and  Mrs. 
Browning,  245  ;  and  see  250. 

Reisebilder,  Heine's,  188. 

Religion  of  Humanity,  358. 

Religious  Verse,  and  its  composers, 
50;  Whittier's,  123-128. 

Renaissance,  Whitman's  method,  371 ; 
revival  of  old  modes,  274. 

Repetend,  use  of,  by  Poe  and  Mrs. 
Browning,  250. 

Repose,  marked  in  Bryant,  80. 

Representative  Men,  Emerson's,  171. 

Republicanism,  on  trial  with  respect 
to  art  and  letters,  10,  II,  306;  its 
early  stages  opposed  to  ideality,  16- 
18 ;  first-fruits  of,  36 ;  Bryant's  char- 
acter a  type  of,  64 ;  its  theory  of 
Culture,  305. 

Reserve,  law  of,  in  Nature  and  Art, 

369.   • 

Restraint,  441. 

Restrictions,  of  recent  period  summa- 
rized, 457. 

Revival,  poetic,  promise  of  early,  464; 
symptoms    and   methods  of,  464- 

475- 

Revolutionary  Period,  poetic  sterility 
of,  16;  its  poetc,  Trumbull,  Freneau, 
etc.,  35,  36. 

Rhapsodists,  Emerson,  136 ;  Whit- 
man, 392. 

Rhetoric,  Holmes's  lyrical,  280;  elo- 
quence of  Taylor's  verse,  411. 

"  Rhoecus,"  Lowell's,  contrasted  with 
Landor's  "Hamadryad,"  311,  312. 

Rhyme,  how  far  an  artifice,  373; 
Goethe  on,  /'*.  ;  Milton  on,  374. 

Rhymed  Addresses,  Holmes's,  283. 

Rhymer  of  Travel,  Taylor's,  402. 

Rhythm,  movement  or  rhythmus  of 
Homer's  verse,  8S,  89;  of  blank- 
verse,  88-90,  374;  of  Emerson's 
prose,  173,  174;  of  hexameter,  198; 
feminine  endings,  Longfellow's  use 


/ 


5o8 


INDEX. 


of,  212;  Poe's  effects  of  sound,  243, 
245,  247,  249 ;  of  Holmes,  280 ;  of 
Whitman's  verse,  371 ;  its  relations 
to  expression,  yji, ;  Whitman  in 
pursuit  of  the  harmonies  of  Nature, 
375;  sonorousness  of  Taylor's,  400, 
—  beauty  of,  in  Prince  Deukalion, 
431  ;  Lanier's  harmony  and  sym- 
phony in  verse,  450. 

Richter,  (Jean  Paul),  influence  on 
Longfellow,  186. 

Riley,  James  Whitcomb,  455. 

Riordan,  Roger  (1847-     )■>  443- 

Robinson,  Annie  Douglas  ("  Marian 
Douglas  ")  (1842-     ),  446. 

Rollins,  Alice  Wellington  (1847-  )> 
446. 

Romanticism,  Longfellow's,  185,  187  ; 
Poe's  characteristic  trait,  252, — 
materials  of,  at  his  command,  261  ; 
and  see  Neo-Romanticism. 

Ropes,  Arthur  Reed,  448. 

Rossetti,  Christina  G.,  446. 

Rossetti,  D.  G.,  and  Emerson,  158. 

Rossetti,  W.  M.,  his  translation  of 
Dante's  Inferno,  210;  edits  English 
Ed.  of  Whitman,  370;  and  see  360. 

Rugby,  village  of,  10. 

Russell,  Irwin,  455. 

Ryan,  Abram  J.  (1840-    ),  444. 

Saadi,  157,  167. 

Saltus,  Francis  Saltus  (1849-    )>  443- 
Salut  au  Monde,  Whitman's,  349. 
Sanborn,  Franklin  Benjamin,  52,  360  ; 

on  Emerson,  136;  on  Lowell,  309, 

325  ;  on  the  "  Biglow  Papers,"  325. 
Sands,  Robert  Charles  (1799-1832),  75. 
Sandys,  George,  33. 
Sangster,    Margaret    Elizabeth 

(1838-    ),446. 
Sargent,  Epes,  57. 
Satire,  satirical  verse,  59;  Poe's,  256, 

—  his    irony,  etc.,    259;   Holmes's 


prose,  295,  —  his  metrical,  compared 
with  that  of  other  satirists,  303  ;  its 
grade  in  art,  321,  322;  and  see  Big- 
low  Papers,  Fable  for  Critics,  etc. 

Savage,  John  (1828-    ),    444. 

Savage,  Minot  Judson  (1841-    ),  50. 

Saxe,  John  Godfrey,  59. 

Saxon  diction,  212. 

Saxon  race,  traits  of,  124. 

"  Scarlet  Letter,  The,"  Hawthorne's,  6. 

Schiller,  198,  422. 

School-books,  pieces  found  in,  280, 310. 

Schoolcraft,  H.  R.,  Indian  legendary, 
202. 

Science,  effect  of  the  new  learning  on 
the  poets,  27  ;  Bryant's  want  of  sci- 
entific vision,  69;  Emerson's  pre- 
vision of  its  discoveries,  153-155; 
poetic  illumination  of,  154;  con- 
trasted with  Art,  155;  Poe's  "Eu- 
reka," 262 ;  scientific  prescience  of 
poets,  262 ;  Holmes's  poetry  of, 
286,  —  as  a  savant,  275;  relations 
to  poetry,  444,  —  in  Whitman's 
verse,  382;  and  see  370,  437,  471. 

Science  of  English  Verse,  The,  La- 
nier's,  451. 

Scollard,  Clinton  (i860-     ),  448. 

Scotland,  abounding  in  distinctive 
quality,  22. 

Scott,  40,  70,  in,  289,  399,  423. 

Scudder,  Horace  E.,  405. 

Sea,  the,  Longfellow's  poetry  of,  217. 

Searing,  Laura  Redden  ("  Howard 
Glyndon  ")  (1842-    ),  446. 

Sears,  Edmund  Hamilton  (1810-76), 

5°- 

Seaside  and  the  Fireside,  The,  Long- 
fellow's, 207,  457. 

Seclusion,  effects  of  solitude  on  the 
poet,  155;  Poe  without  comrades, 
264;  beneficial  effect  in  the  cases 
of  Whittier  and  Burns,  414. 

Sectionalism,  local  types,  474. 


IXDEX. 


509 


Sedgwick,  Catharine  Maria,  40. 

Self-assertion,  Whitman's,  389. 

Sensuousness,  224. 

Sententiousness,  poetic,  Emerson's, 
160-163 ;  Lowell's,  314. 

Sentiment,  Longfellow  the  poet  of, 
180,  182,  190  ;  Lowell's,  190 ; 
Holmes's,  287.         • 

Sentimental  Verse,  in  England  and 
America,  43. 

Sevigne,  Madame  de,  a  saying  of,  138. 

Sewall,  Harriet  Winslow  (1819-  ), 
SO- 

Shakespeare,  English  quality  of,  12; 
play  of  "  The  Tempest,"  34  ;  Emer- 
son on,  179;  Osric  and  Hamlet, 
313;  and  see  133,  146,  175,  259,  333, 

335.  351.  374.  386>  468. 
Shaw,  John  (1 778-1809),  36. 
Shelley,   quoted,    174;    influence    on 

Lowell,  310,  —  on  Taylor,  405,  408  ; 

as  a  translator,  424  ;  and  see  70,  76, 

164,  239,  245,  267,  286,  287,  308,385, 

402,403,  411. 
Sherman,  Frank  Dempster  (i860-     ), 

448. 
"Sherwood  Bonner."     See  MacDow- 

ell,  Katherine  S.  B. 
Shinn,   Milicent    Washburn   (18-    ), 

446. 
Shurtleff,  William  Steele   (1830-    ), 

443- 
Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  453. 
Sigourney,*  Lydia  Howard    Huntley, 

43- 

Sill,  Edward  Rowland  (1843-     )»  443- 

Simms,  William  Gilmore,  38,  41. 

Simplicity,  Bryant's,  77;  Emerson's 
demand  for,  170 ;  Longfellow's,  198 ; 
of  Poe's  forms,  251 ;  true  and  false, 
389 ;  and  see  224,  459. 

Sincerity,  108 ;  Bryant's,  76. 

"  Skeleton  in  Armor,  The,"  Longfel- 
low's, 191,  192. 

Sketch-work,  current  half-efforts,  460. 


"  Skipper  Ireson's  Ride,"  Whittier's, 
109,  114. 

"  Sleeper,  The,"  Poe's,  243. 

Smith,  Elizabeth  Oakes  (1806-    ),  50. 

Smith,  Capt.  John,  34. 

Smith,  May  Louise  Riley  (1842-  ), 
446. 

Smybert,  John,  277. 

Snider,  Denton  Jacques,  198,  454. 

Snow-Bound,  Whittier's,  106;  re- 
viewed, 1 1 7-1 20;  and  see  126,  457. 

Society  and  Solitude,  Emerson's,  172. 

Society-Verse,  earlier  examples,  59; 
Holmes's,  284-286 ;  recent  increase, 
284;  relative  status,  285;  Aldrich's, 
440 ;  poets  of  the  latest  vogue,  448  ; 
and  see  287,  also  French  Forms. 

Song  and  Story ;  Fawcett's,  441. 

"Song  of  Nature,"  Emerson's,  155. 

"  Song  of  the  Camp,"  Taylor's,  412. 

Songs  and  Lyrics,  Miss  Hutchinson's, 
447- 

Songs  and  Song-Writers,  49,  443 ; 
Holmes,  282. 

Songs,  National,  Fletcher  of  Sal- 
toun's  saying,  35. 

Songs  of  Fair  Weather,  Thompson's, 

443- 

Songs  of  Labor,  Whittier's,  in. 

Songs  of  Summer,  Stoddard's,  457. 

Songs  of  the  Sierras,  Miller's,  452. 

Sonnets,  Whittier's,  ill;  perfection 
of  Longfellow's,  213;  and  sonnet- 
eering, 444,  460. 

Sons  of  Godwin,  The,  Leighton's,  454. 

Sophists,  the,  143. 

South,  the,  early  neglect  of  literature, 
34 ;  poets  and  poetry  of,  37 ;  eigh- 
teenth century  taste,  37,  38  ;  scanty 
production,  38  ;  female  poets  of, 
447;  traits  of,  449;  Timrod,  La- 
nier, and  other  poets,  449-45*  ;  re- 
cent promise  of,  451. 

44  Southern  Literary  Messenger,  The," 
235- 


5"> 


INDEX. 


Southey,  43,  407. 

Spanish  Student,    The,  Longfellow's, 

204. 
Spenser,   76,    331,    335;    Lowell    on, 

332>  333- 

"Sphinx,  The,"  Emerson's,  153,  168. 

Spirituality,  of  Poe's  verse,  267 ;  es- 
sential to  a  perfect  naturalism,  370. 

Spofford,  Harriet  Elizabeth  Prescott 
(1835-    ),  445- 

Spontaneity,  Lowell's  theory  of  song, 
316,  —  his  outdoor  verse,  317  ;  Low- 
ell's, 337  ;  of  our  female  poets,  445 ; 
and  see  108,  242,  375. 

Sprague,  Charles,  37,  99,  283. 

"  Star-Spangled  Banner,  The,"  36. 

Sterne,  294. 

Stockton,  Frank  R.,  463. 

Stoddard,  Charles  Warren,  452. 

Stoddard,  Elizabeth  Drew  Barstow 
(1823-    ),  50,  445,  463. 

Stoddard,  Richard  Henry,  artistic 
range,  57 ;  traits,  58 ;  fine  imagina- 
tion, 58 ;  blank-verse,  58 ;  odes,  58 ; 
The  King's  Bell,  58 ;  on  hexameter, 
197 ;  friendship  with  Taylor,  403 ; 
and  see  54,  no,  408,  439. 

St.  Olaf's  Kirk,  Houghton's,  443. 

Stoic  Philosophy,  142. 

Storrs,  Richard  S.,  quoted,  472. 

Story,  William  Wetmore,  51,  54,  55, 

56. 

Story  of  Kennett,  Taylor's,  421. 

Stowe,  Harriet  Beecher,  49. 

Strachey,  William,  34. 

Street,  Alfred  Billings,  47. 

Strodtmann,  Adolf,  423. 

"Stuart  Sterne."  See  Bloede,  Ger- 
trude. 

Style,  Bryant's  pure  and  simple,  71, 
77  ;  Whittier's  metrical,  1 10 ;  artless- 
ness  of  Emerson's,  1 52  ;  Emerson's 
metrical,  1 58-171,  —  native  and  un- 
studied, 1 59,  —  deficient  in  structure, 


159,  —  unconventional,  159,  160, — 
mode  of  composition,  160,  —  lack 
of  synthesis,  160,  —  rich  in  notable 
passages,  160-163,  —  his  rhythm 
and  compression,  1 63,  —  lyrical 
quality,  164,  165,  —  mode  of  ex- 
pression, id.,  —  influence  of  certain 
models  on,  166,  167,  —  escape  from 
early  faults  0^167-169,  —  its  chief 
canon,  170;  obscurity,  168,  221  ;  sec- 
ondary to  thought,  172;  self-forma- 
tive, id. ;  apothegmatic  bent  of 
Emerson's,  172,  173;  Longfellow's 
free-hand  measures,  207  ;  faults  and 
merits  of  Poe's,  257,  —  his  use  of 
the  dash  and  italics,  257  ;  Holmes's, 
of  18th  Century,  288;  Lowell's 
prose,  330,  331 ;  Whitman's  prolix- 
ity, 374,  —  effects  of  his  method, 
376 ;  is  the  man,  378 ;  Whitman's 
fine  diction,  titles  and  epithets, 
378;  Taylor's  poetic,  411. 

Subjectivity,  Poe's,  270,  271;    Whit- 
man's, 352  ;  and  see  146. 

Success,  worldly,  prestige  of  in  Bry- 
ant's case,  64. 

Supernaturalism     of  New    England, 
Whittier's,  103,  114. 

Superstition    and    Servility,    conflict 
with,  Emerson's,  136. 

"  Susan  Coolidge."    See  Woolsey,  S.C. 

Swedenborg,  143,  179. 

Swinburne,  on  Whitman,  386;  and  see 
77,  91,  250,  334,  360,  374,  382,  385. 

Swift,  342. 

Swinton,  John,  360. 

Swinton,  William,  360. 

Symonds,  Jehn  Addington,  360. 

Sympathetic  Quality,  notable  in  Long- 
fellow, 222. 

Symphonic  quality,  see  Rhythm. 

Tact,    Longfellow's    artistic,    223: 
Whitman's,  350. 


INDEX. 


5" 


Taine,  H.  A.,  theory  of  environment, 
etc.,  3-12;  on  England,  48. 

Talent,  and  Genius,  187. 

Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn,  Longfellow's, 
114,  203,  208,  209. 

Tales  of  the  Grotesque  and  Arabesque, 
Poe's,  238. 

Talfourd,  468. 

Tasso,  334. 

Taste,  its  bearing  on  the  chasteness 
of  art,  166;  Longfellow  the  apostle 
of,  181-183,  l9°>  l9l ;  Longfellow 
our  pioneer  of,  220 ;  Poe  on  poetry 
as  the  child  of,  249;  Lowell's,  315; 
vs.  Duty,  315;  inborn  with  Amer- 
icans, 474. 

Taylor,  Bayard,  his  landscape,  47 ; 
"  Faust,"  55,  90,  209 ;  pastorals,  198 ; 
review  of  his  career  and  writings, 
396-434;  type  of  the  modern  and 
New  York  author,  396,  397  ;  versa- 
tility, 398;  birth  and  early  life,  398, 
399;  his  first  book,  Ximena,  399; 
sonorous  quality,  400 ;  Travels, 
400,  401 ;  on  "The  Tribune,"  402  ; 
Rhymes  of  Travel,  402 ;  Poe  on,  ib. ; 
portrait  by  Read,  ib. ;  Arcadian 
life,  403 ;  Californian  ballads,  403 ; 
with  Stoddard,  Boker,  etc.,  403, 404 ; 
A  Book  of  Romances,  404 ;  "  Hylas," 
ib. ;  influence  of  Shelley  on,  405; 
his  first  wife,  Mary  Agnew,  405; 
"  Life  and  Letters  "  of,  405 ;  Poems 
of  the  Orient,  406-408;  oriental 
traits,  406;  fine  narrative  pieces, 
songs,  etc.,  407, 408 ;  Poems  of  Home 
and  Travel,  408;  "Putnam's 
Monthly,"  ib. ;  divided  ambition, 
409 ;  capabilities,  410 ;  personal 
traits,  ib.;  poetic  style,  411  ;  Penn- 
sylvanian  idyls,  etc.,  412;  effect  of 
his  career  on  his  lyrical  product, 
41 3-4 15  5  theory  of  life  and  art,  415 ; 
environment,  416-419 ;  a  journalist, 


etc.,  in  New  York,  417;  lecturing 
and  overwork,  418  ;  marriage  to 
Marie  Hansen,  419;  755*  Poet's 
Journal,  419 ;  his  Novels,  421  ;  as  a 
critic,  ib. ;  German  "  Studies,"  422  ; 
translation  of  Faust,  422-425 ;  Pic- 
ture of  St.  John  and  Lars,  425 ; 
Home  Pastorals,  426;  Goethe  and 
Shakespeare  Odes,  427 ;  The  Na- 
tional Ode,  ib. ;  his  dramatic  works, 
428-432 ;  The  Prophet,  428 ;  Masque 
of  the  Gods,  430 ;  a  poet  of  noble 
ideals,  ib.;  Prince  Deukalion,  431, 
432;  death,  433;  thoughts  on  his 
career,  433,  434 ;  and  see  49,  54,  56, 
no,  113,  250,  256,  439,  449,  452. 

Taylor,  Mrs.  Marie  Hansen,  405,  419. 

Technique,  devotion  of  modern  Eng- 
lish poets  to,  48 ;  defects  of  Whit- 
tier's  verse,  107-109;  reform-poets 
lacking  in,  109 ;  Longfellow's,  193 ; 
recent  additions  to  technical  range 
of  English  verse,  195;  Lowell's 
merits  and  eccentricities  in  verse, 
3r4> 3lS>  —  m  prose,  328, 329 ;  Whit- 
man's lyrical  method  and  rhythm, 
358,  —  he  rejects  wonted  forms,  372 ; 
how  far  necessary,  372,  yj^  ;  Whit- 
man's intricate  form,  yjy  ;  Aldrich's, 
441 ;  perfect  finish  not  desirable, 
448  ;  of  our  minor  verse,  456 ;  over- 
elaboration,   459;    youth    attracted 

by>  »3S  460. 

Tegner,  189. 

Temperament,  unrest  of  the  poetic, 
54;  the  poetic  sensitiveness,  268; 
study  of  Poe's,  Chap.  VII., passim  ; 
Taylor's  oriental  traits,  406. 

Tennyson,  his  scientific  vision,  69 ;  his 
blank-verse,  86,  87;  Emerson  on, 
179;  choice  of  themes,  182;  and 
Longfellow,  193;  "In  Memoriam," 
195;  as  a  dramatic  poet,  204,467; 
influence  on  Lowell,  310;  and  see 


5i2 


INDEX. 


39,  48,  70,  76,  91, 108,  136,  152,  153, 
194,  202, 256,  339,  351, 374, 406, 423, 

436, 459- 
K  Tenth  Muse."  See  Bradstreet,  Anne. 
Tent  on  the  Beach,   Whittier's,  114, 

"5- 
Thackeray,  223,  286,  328,  452. 
"  Thanatopsis,"  Bryant's,  72,  79,  80, 

81,  85. 
Thaxter,  Celia  Leighton  (1835-    )» ner 

landscape,  47 ;  and  see  446. 
Thayer,    Stephen    Henry    (1839-    ), 

443- 

Thayer,  William  Roscoe  ("  Paul 
Hermes  "),  443. 

Theatre,  the.     See  Drama. 

Theme,  primitive  absence  of,  19 ;  in- 
vention of,  avoided  by  great  poets, 
20 ;  the  poet's  unbounded  liberty  of, 
54,  454;  choice  of,  by  Longfellow 
and  Tennyson,  182;  nobility  requi- 
site in,  430. 

Theocritus,  89,  210,  339,  386,  423. 

Theories,  Metrical,  dangers  of,  450. 

Thirty  Poems,  Bryant's,  74. 

Thomas,  Edith  Matilda  (1854-    ),  447. 

Thompson,  James  Maurice,  443. 

Thompson,  John  Randolph  (1823-73), 

54- 
Thomson,  67. 
Thoreau,  Henry  David,  his  landscape, 

47  ;  quoted,  68,  69 ;  and  see  52, 1 16, 

336>  34i,  386. 
Thought,   represented    by    Emerson, 

136,  176. 
Three     Memorial     Poems,     Lowell's 

Odes,  344. 
"Threnody,"  Emerson's,  154,  165. 
Ticknor,  Francis  Orrery,  49. 
Ticknor,  George,  138. 
Ticknor  &  Co.,  404. 
Tilton,  Theodore  (1835-     ),  443. 
Time,  its  effect  on  popular   ideals, 

225. 


Time,  Accent,  etc.,  373. 

Timrod,  Henry,  54,  449. 

"  Titan,"  Jean  Paul's,  186. 

Titles,  Whitman's  effective,  378. 

Tone,  a  supreme  quality,  68 ;  Thoreau 
on,  68,  69 ;  of  Poe's  masterpieces, 
258;  of  Taylor's  oriental  poems, 
407. 

Town-Life,  good  and  bad  effects  of, 
468. 

Townsend,  George  Alfred,  298,  451. 

Townsend,  Mary  Ashley  ("  Xariffa  ") 
(18-    ),  447. 

"  To  the  Dandelion,"  Lowell's,  319. 

Tradition,  and  Invention,  179 ;  con- 
flict with,  56,  47 1 ;  and  see  469. 

Transcendentalism,  its  poets,  51,  52; 
Whittier's,  102,  125-128;  Emer- 
son's, 140;  distinguished  from  in- 
duction, 146;  its  strength  and  weak- 
ness in  art,  168, 169 ;  Holmes  averse 
to,  288,  297  ;  Whitman  an  off-shoot 
of,  355;  provincialism  of,  356;  and 
see  443. 

Transitional  periods,  26. 

Translations,  etc.,  Bryant's  Iliad  and 
Odyssey,  83 ;  work  suited  to  the  af- 
ternoon of  life,  83 ;  Bryant's,  from 
the  Spanish,  91 ;  Longfellow's 
minor  work,  189,  —  his  Divine  Com- 
edy, its  theory,  merits,  and  de- 
fects, 209-213;  other  translators  of 
Dante,  209,  210;  the  ideal  standard, 
210;  faulty  use  of  derivatives  from 
the  Italian,  212;  Lowell  on,  332; 
Taylor's  Faust,  in  the  original  me- 
tres, 422-425 ;  recent,  by  Miss  Pres- 
ton, Howland,  etc.,  454;  and  see 
55,  also  Dante  and  Homeric  Trans- 
lations. 

Travels,  Bryant's,  75;  Taylor's,  400- 
402,  —  his  books  of,  400-402. 

'« Tribune,  The,  N.  Y.,"  256,  400. 

Trochaic  Verse,  Longfellow's,    195; 


INDEX. 


513 


trochaic    dimeter    of  "Hiawatha," 

201,  202. 
Trowbridge,  John  Townsend,  49,  439. 
Trumbull,  John,  35. 
Truth,  of  Nature,  its  elusiveness,  151. 
Tuckerman,  Henry  Theodore,  41. 
Tupper,  378. 
Turgenieff,  105,  124. 
Turner,  242. 

"Twilight  of  the  Poets,  The,"  475. 
"Two  Rivulets,"  Whitman's,  362,  363. 
Tyler,  Moses  Coit,  his  "  Hist,  of  Am. 

Lit.,"  32-34. 
Tyler,  Royall,  36,  466. 
Tyndall,  153. 

"  Ulalume,"  Poe's,  246. 

Ultima  Thule,  Longfellow's,  214. 

Under  the  Willows,  Lowell's,  338,  457. 

Underwood,  Francis  H.,  life  of  Low- 
ell, 307. 

u  Undiscovered  Country,  The,"  How- 
ells's,  295. 

Unitarianism,  Emerson's  early,  138. 

Unmorality,  of  French  art,  124;  Poe's 
lack  of  moral  sense,  269. 

Universality,  of  expression,  a  trait  of 
genius,  377  ;  deficient,  in  Whitman's 
theory  and  practice,  384,  386. 

"Universal  Soul,"  the,  149,  153. 

University-Group,  the  Cambridge,  50, 

51- 

University-Poets,   Holmes    the   Har- 
vard laureate,  276,  277,  283. 
Unrest,  of  the  poetic  temperament, 

54- 
Utilitarianism,    in    America,    22-31 ; 
metropolitan,  53,  54. 

Vagueness,  450. 
Venable,  William  Henry,  453. 
Verplanck,  Gulian  Crommelin,  41,  75. 
Versatility,  Holmes's,  292 ;  Taylor  an 
example  of,  398;  Fawcett's,  441. 


Vers  de  Societe,  see  Society  Verse. 

Very,  Jones,  52. 

"  Vicar  of  Wakefield,  The,"  200. 

Victorian  Poets,  by  the  author  of  this 
volume,  references  to,  2,  26,  27,  75, 
88,  90,  108,  189,  195,  198,  204,  208, 
233>  245>  249>  259»  262,  268,  273,  284, 
307,  321, 327,  339, 342,  374,  383,  417, 
430,  436,  437,  455, 456, 459, 462, 466, 
467. 

Victorian  School,  437. 

Views  Afoot,  Taylor's,  400. 

"  Vignettes,"  Holmes's,  286. 

Villon,  395. 

Virgil,  translations,  by  Miss  Preston, 
Howland,  Wilstach,  etc.,  454;  and 
see  89,  117,175.  J99- 

Vision  of  Sir  Launfal,  Lowell's,  319. 

Vita  Nuova,  210. 

Voices  of  the  Night,  Longfellow's,  72, 
188,  189. 

Voices  of  Freedom,  Whittier's,  457. 

Voss's  Iliad,  91,  189,  198. 

Wallace,  William  Ross,  41. 

Ward,  William  Hayes,  449. 

Ware,  William,  41. 

"  Warden  of  the  Cinque  Ports,"  Long- 
fellow's, compared  with  Tennyson's 
"  Ode,"  193. 

Wasson,  David  Atwood,  52. 

Warton,  Thomas  and  Joseph,  277. 

Washington,  Lowell  on,  345. 

Watteau,  115. 

Watts,  71. 

Webster,  Augusta,  447. 

Webster,  Daniel,  compared  with  Bry- 
ant, 77  ;  and  see  299,  323. 

Webster,  John,  432. 

Weeks,  Robert  Kelley  (1840-76),  443. 

Wells,  Charles,  author  of  "Joseph 
and  his  Brethren,"  395. 

West,  Benjamin,  46. 

Whipple,  Edwin  Percy,  cited,  31. 


33 


5H 


INDEX. 


White,  Richard  Grant,  his  test  of  our 
national  literature,  5 ;  on  "  The 
Scarlet  Letter,"  etc.,  6;  and  see 
400. 

Whiting,  Charles  Goodrich,  360. 

Whitman,  Sarah  Helen  (1803-78),  50. 

Whitman,  Walter  ("  Walt  "),  his  anti- 
cipatory effort,  21  ;  fresh  portrayal 
of  outdoor  nature,  47  ;  iconoclasm, 
59;  recent  views,  ib. ;  traits,  60; 
strictures  on  American  poetry,  60, 
389,  390;  influenced  and  encour- 
aged by  Emerson,  166 ;  the  latter 's 
qualification  of  early  praise,  ib.  ;  the 
countertype  of  Poe,  263  ;  review  of 
his  life  and  works,  349-395 ;  birth, 
349;  Saint  au  Monde,  349;  publi- 
city at  home  and  abroad,  350;  de- 
bate concerning  him,  350  -  353  ; 
method  of  the  present  inquiry,  351 ; 
his  bearing,  352  ;  life  and  song,  353 ; 
a  poet  of  lyric  and  idyllic  genius,  ib.; 
Leaves  of  Grass,  reviewed,  354-365 ; 
"Putnam's  Monthly"  on,  354;  re- 
lations to  the  Concord  movement, 
355 ;  class  feeling  and  provincial- 
ism, 356 ;  first  impressions  of,  357 ; 
likeness  and  attitude,  357  ;  analysis 
of  his  theory  and  purpose,  358 ;  Em- 
erson on,  359;  habits,  haunts,  etc., 
359 ;  "  The  Good  Gray  Poet,"  360 ; 
disciples  in  Europe  and  America, 
360;  treatment  of,  by  his  country- 
men, 361  ;  Centeitnial  Edition,  362  ; 
"  Drum-Taps,"  "  Two  Rivulets," 
etc.,  362,  363  ;  prose  style,  in  "  Dem- 
ocratic Vistas,"  etc.,  363 ;  "  Memo- 
randa during  the  War,"  364 ;  poems 
on  Death,  and  Lincoln's  "  Burial 
Hymn,"  364;  choice  passages,  365; 
his  physical  and  sexual  themes,  366 ; 
"Children  of  Adam,"  366,  367; 
alleged  indecency,  367 ;  his  plea 
in  defence,  367;   the  true  test  of, 


367  ;  misconception  of  Nature's 
law,  368-370 ;  mistakes  coarseness 
for  strength,  369;  lack  of  spiritual- 
ity, 370 ;  Rossetti's  edition  of,  ib. ; 
examination  of  his  peculiar  lyrical 
method,  371-377  ;  whence  derived, 
371 ;  his  protest  against  wonted 
forms,  372 ;  question  of  technique, 
rhythm,  accent,  rhyme,  etc.,  273  > 
views  on  blank-verse,  374 ;  his  state- 
ment of  his  theory,  375,  —  its  true 
origin,  ib. ;  results  attained,  376 ; 
fine  diction,  titles,  epithets,  378 ;  as 
a  poet  of  nature,  379 ;  of  humanity, 
380;  his  imagination,  380,  381  ;  H. 
M.  Alden  on,  381  ;  his  "  Cata- 
logues," ib. ;  pathos  and  tenderness, 
382 ;  science,  382  ;  protest  against 
conventionalism,  383  ;  realism  and 
democracy,  ib.  ;  incomplete  view  of 
the  latter,  ib. ;  narrowness,  384 ;  not 
read  by  the  people,  385 ;  poet  of  a 
select  and  cultured  class,  385 ;  his 
excessive  formalism,  386,  387  ; 
method  compared  with  Words- 
worth's, 387,  388 ;  how  far  affected, 
388,  389;  his  strictures  on  Amer- 
ican poetry,  389,  390 ;  egoism,  390 ; 
benign  and  attractive  old  age,  391  ; 
lecture  on  Lincoln,  ib.;  a  rhapso- 
dist,  392  ;  summary  of  his  traits  and 
abilities,  392-395;  future  place  in 
literature,  394 ;  how  far  a  figure- 
painter,  466;    and  see  12,  96,  113, 

I29>  J53>  J59»  220>  439.  473- 
Whitney,    Adeline   Dutton    Train 

(1824-  ),  50. 
Whittier,  John  Greenleaf,  his  land- 
scape, 47 ;  the  people's  poet,  48 ; 
more  flexible  than  Bryant,  71  ;  re- 
view of  his  career  and  works,  95- 
132;  judgment  of,  by  Greeley  and 
other  typical  Americans,  95 ;  Eng- 
lish  verdict    on,   96 ;    how   far    a 


INDEX. 


515 


national  poet,  96,  97 ;  Parkman's 
"the  Poet  of  New  England,"  97; 
New  England's  bard,  97-99 ;  a  test 
of  this,  98  ;  his  constituency,  99, 
100  ;  poet  of  an  historic  time,  100 ; 
birth  and  training,  101-104;  an- 
cestry, 101  ;  Quakerism,  101,  102 ; 
early  farm-life,  102;  influenced  by 
Burns,  102,  103;  first  acquaintance 
with  Garrison,  103 ;  entrance  on 
journalism,  103  ;  Supernaturalism 
of  New  England,  103,  114;  edits 
Brainard,  104;  devotes  himself  to 
the  anti-slavery  cause,  104-106; 
May  and  Bryant  on,  104 ;  Voices  of 
Freedom,  105;  edits  "The  Free- 
man," etc.,  105 ;  in  the  abolition 
struggle,  106 ;  wins  the  popular 
heart,  106 ;  technical  shortcomings, 
107-109 ;  hasty  composition,  news- 
paper-rhymes, 108 ;  a  "  reform-poet," 
109;  compared  to  Mrs.  Browning, 
109,  122;  "Randolph  of  Roanoke," 
etc.,  109,  122;  later  artistic  improve- 
ment, 109;  prose  style,  no;  Mar- 
garet Smith's  Journal,  no ;  met- 
rical style,  no;  early  volumes  — 
Mogg  Me  gone,  —  Bridal  of  Penna- 
cook,  —  Songs  of  Labor,  ill;  our 
foremost  balladist,  11 2-1 14;  Qua- 
ker ballads,  113;  ballads  of  witch- 
craft, etc.,  113;  "Skipper  Ireson's 
Ride,"  1 14 ;  Tent  on  the  Beach,  1 14 ; 
poet  of  rural  life,  1 15-120;  pastoral 
spirit,  116;  on  Dinsmore,  116; 
Snow-Bound,  117- 120;  his  fancy 
and  imagination,  119;  virginal 
quality,  121 ;  passionate  anti-slavery 
lyrics,  121 ;  personal  and  memorial 
poems,  122;  "Ichabod,"  122;  reli- 
gious exaltation,  123-128;  militant 
and  ministrant,  124 ;  his  prayer  and 
praise,  125;  transcendental  spirit, 
125,   126;    scorn  of   bigotry,   127; 


trust  in  the  "inward  light,"  127, 
128;  a  notable  personage,  128;  en- 
dearing traits,  purity,  philanthropy, 
earnestness,  129,  130 ;  poet  of  the 
altar  and  the  hearth,  130;  He- 
braic fervor,  130;  Oliver  Johnson 
on,  131 ;  prophetic  quality,  131 ;  in 
the  Land  of  Beulah,  131  ;  compared 
with  Taylor,  414;  and  see  12,  92, 
191,  213,  216,  223,  313,  325,  385,  390, 
400,412,439,452,459. 

Whittredge,  Worthington,  46. 

Wigglesworth,  Michael,  33. 

Wilcox,  Carlos,  47. 

Wilde,  Richard  Henry,  yj- 

Will,  Poe's  lack  of,  234,  269-272. 

Williams,   Roger,  quoted,  101 ;   and 
see  34. 

"  William  Wilson,"  Poe's,  231. 

Willis,  Nathaniel  Parker,  41,  42,  75, 
265,  266,  400,  401. 

Willson,  Byron  Forceythe,  49,  453. 

Wilson,  John  ("  Christopher  North  "), 
39>  257. 

Wilson,  Robert  Burns  (1850-    ),  451. 

Wilstach,  John  Augustine  (1824-  ), 
55»  454. 

Winslow,  Edward,  34. 

Winter,  William,  quoted,  236;  his  po- 
etry and  prose,  440. 

Winthrop,  John,  34. 

Winthrop,  Robert  Charles,  283. 

Wit,  Holmes's,  277  ;  its  tenure  in  art, 
321 ;  Lowell's,  332. 

Wood,  William,  34. 

Woodberry,  George  Edward,  461. 

"Woodnotes,"  154,  164. 

Woolsey,  Sarah  Channing  ("Susan 
Coolidge")  (18-    ),  446. 

Woolson,  Constance  Fenimore,  463. 

Wordsworth,  Bryant's  master,  66,  67, 
72;  quoted,  67,  76;  Emerson  on, 
179;  contrasted  with  Whitman,  387  ; 
and  see  39,  65,  70,  75,  134,  141,  149, 


5i6 


INDEX. 


152, 173,  286,  315,  317, 319,  334, 335, 

374,  444,  453,  470. 
Work,  Henry  Clay  (1832-84),  49,  443. 
Wright,  William  Bull,  52,  443. 
Wright,  I.  C,  212. 
Wyant,  A.  H.,  46. 

M  Xariffa."    See  Towmend,  M.  A. 


Xzmena,  Taylor's,  399. 

Year's  Life,  A,  Lowell's,  309. 
Young,  William,  454. 
Younger  Poets,  the,  61 ;  and  see  Chap. 
XII. 

Zest,  marked  in  Holmes,  278,  281. 


THE  END 


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